Sir Alfred James Munnings, P.R.A., R.W.S.

Major Tommy Bouch, Master of the Belvoir Hunt, Woolsthorpe, Leicestershire
Sale: Sotheby's, London, May 13, 1987, lot 76, illustratred
Richard Green, London (1987)
Spink & Son, London
The Artis Group, New York (by 1990)
Estate of Anne E. Dyson, Millbrook, New York (and sold, Sotheby's New York, June 7, 2001, lot 541)
Sold: Sotheby's New York, December 2, 2005, lot 135, illustrated
Acquired at the above sale

London, Alpine Club Gallery, Pictures of the Belvoir Hunt and Other Scenes of English Country Life by A.J. Munnings, A.R.A., 1921, no. 21
Bournemouth, Russell-Cotes Art Gallery, An Artist's Life: Retrospective Exhibition of Works of Sir Alfred Munnings, 1955, no. 990
London, Royal Academy, Munnings Retrospective Exhibition, 1956, no. 107
London, Richard Green Fine Paintings, Sporting Art, 1987, no. 44

Lionel Lindsay, Pictures of Horses and English Life, London, 1927, illustrated p. 51, and 1939 edition, p. 73, no. 32, illustrated
Sir Alfred Munnings, The Second Burst, London, 1951, illustrated opposite p. 73
The Chronicle of the Horse, January 17, 1992, illustrated as cover

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This painting is in beautiful condition. The paint layer is clean. There are no retouches or damages. The canvas is lined but the texture of the paint is unaffected by the lining. In its current frame the painting should be hung as is.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

With the long blue shadows cast by an early sun, the palpably wet, sloppy snow, and the unconventional composition of kennel-men and dogs heading out and away from the viewer, The Young Entry, A Snowy Road, Woolsthorpe is easily the most remarkable of Munnings' series of images that follow the Belvoir Hunt. Painted in February or March of 1921, The Young Entry, A Snowy Road, Woolsthorpe was part of an extended campaign to document the daily life and behind-the-scenes activities of the hounds, horses and huntsmen associated with Beloir Castle, the Duke of Rutland's country seat in Leicestershire.

The commission of the Belvoir Hunt pictures was given to Munnings by Major Tommy Bouch, the master of the Duke of Rutlands hounds. Bouch had been deeply impressed by Munnings' paintings of the Canadian Cavalry Brigade (to whom the artist had been attached by the British Ministry of Information throughout the first World War) which were exhibited in the Royal Academy's "War Records Exhibition" of 1919. Bouch hoped Munnings could produce an equally unusual and resplendent view of country life, and to that end, he offered the artist "all the models you need - horses, hounds, men - all day and every day. You have only to say the word, and they shall be wherever you want them. If you want a smart fellow in scarlet on a horse... if you want hounds in the kennels or in the park, or if you want a string of horses out at exercise, they shall stand on the road" (Munnings, The Second Burst, p. 69).

Munnings had been painting fox hunting scenes since the first years of his career (see the rather traditional quartet of hunt paintings from 1902 in the Charlotte Dorrance Wright Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art); but to have the facilities and dogs of the renowned Belvoir kennels spread open for him was an opportunity that delighted the artist. Munnings spent several months living with Bouch in Woolsthorpe, prowling the kennels, reveling in the cold, foggy mornings, painting most days, but occasionally also participating in the hunts and races that Bouche organized himself. Some two dozen pictures, rapid studies as well as carefully finished compositions, of dogs and horses at exercise, the commotion of point to point racing (open field racing), and the unguarded moments of aristocratic riders as well as common kennel boys were finally exhibited at the Alpine Club Gallery in London in late spring of 1921.

The Young Entry, A Snowy Road, Woolsthorpe depicts a kennel-man in his long white coat and two boys drafted to assist, exercising a large troop of young, untrained dogs in the early morning hours. The grand lines of Belvoir Park provided a sweeping organization for Munnings' bold, patchy paint application, as he raced to set down the controlled disorder of the similarly colored dogs and the stark patterns of snow that "melted faster than he could paint it." Munnings apparently had some concern about how the most direct of his Belvoir paintings, such as The Young Entry, A Snowy Road, Woolsthorpe might be viewed by an audience accustomed to highly finished, often stagey, hunt scenes; and he appended a note in the catalogue "I have not touched any of this work away from the spot, and they stand as impressions, studies or pictures as the onlooker chooses to style them." In fact, Munnings need not have worried about the reception, for the exhibition was an extraordinary success; along with a major purchase by Mrs. Payne Whitney, an American heiress and new patron, the exhibition also brought the artist a long-term contract with the firm of Frost & Reed for reproduction rights to many of his hunt and racing images.