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

Ian MacNichol Gallery, Glasgow
James Anderson, Motherwell, Lankarshire
Private Collection

London, Royal Academy, Sir Alfred James Munnings Retrospective Exhibition, 1956, no. 67

This condition report has been kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation Inc.: This work is in beautiful condition. The canvas has never been removed from its original stretcher. The paint layer is cleaned and lightly varnished. It shows no retouches. The painting should be hung in its current state.
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Alfred Munnings began hunting with the Norwich Staghounds in the first decade of the twentieth century and hunting scenes provided inspiration throughout his career. He was particularly fond of the theme of a huntsman at the edge of a wood, reveling in the challenge of depicting complex contrasts of light and shade and the textures of trees, a horse’s coat and the clothes of the huntsman. Munnings’s grooms, such as George Curzon at Swainthorpe, usually provided the patient models for the huntsmen. In the first volume of his autobiography, An Artist’s Life, Munnings described the delight of painting George: "Winter mornings and afternoons passed as, dressed in scarlet, he posed on a horse. At last I was seeing the color of a scarlet coat in the sun, the sheen of a clipped horse, with the lighting on fences, tree-trunks, fields" (Munnings, An Artist's Life, London, 1950, p. 195).

This painting, produced circa 1913, is remarkable for the freedom and brilliance with which Munnings suggests the bold blue shadows of the forest floor, the lemon shafts of sunlight, and the myriad colors reflected in the hunter’s coat. A Hunting morning, dated 1913, in the Sir Alfred Munnings Art Museum, Castle House, Dedham, shows a similar fascination with huntsmen in a forest lit by wintry sunshine. The museum also has two oil on board Studies of a wood which are very similar in handling to the present painting.