SIR ALFRED JAMES MUNNINGS, P.R.A., R.W.S. | RIVER LANDSCAPE

Possibly Ackerman's, London where purchased in the 1970s by the mother of the present owner

London, Royal Academy, Sir Alfred Munnings K.C.V.O., P.P.R.A., 1956, number not known

River scenes form a considerable part of Munning's oeuvre. The work of Norwich School artists such as John Crome and John Sell Cotman, combined with the rivers and marshes of his native Suffolk provided early inspiration. Stranded, painted in 1897, depicts two children, Munnings’ cousins Nina and Cecil in a rowing boat stuck in the reeds. This work along with Pike fishing in January were, in 1899, the first of Munnings’ paintings to be exhibited at the Royal Academy. This subject matured and developed resulting in the highly acclaimed series of canoeing pictures such as Idle Moments (1906) and a September Afternoon (1939). As Munnings himself described The Full River, painted in 1931, ‘…this full river was our playground, and a reminder of my youth’.

According to a label on the reverse, this delightful plein-air oil was included in Munnings’ retrospective at the Royal Academy in 1956 which included sixty landscapes and led his biographer to state that: 'His pure landscapes would of themselves have made a reputation... posterity will honour not the facile remembrancer of briefly celebrated horses and the vanishing panoply of the hunt, but the artist who painted the immemorial glory of the gorse on Ringland Hills.' (Reginald Pound, The Englishman; A Biography of Sir Alfred Munnings, 1962, pp.212-3).