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Lot Essay
Munnings had a particular love of the dramatic and distinctive landscape around Exmoor in Devon, where he and his wife owned a country cottage. While Munnings was occupied with commissions in his London studio or at the country houses of his patrons, Violet would retreat to Exmoor where she hunted with the Devon and Somerset Staghounds. The works that Munnings executed on Exmoor have an especially intimate and personal feel since typically they were unsolicited and painted purely for pleasure. Munnings painted some of his finest landscapes in the West Country.
Munnings describes in his autobiography how the present work, An Exmoor Shepherd came to be painted, using a local sheep farmer and friend, Froude Bawden as the model:
'Being known as a painter of horses, pictures of sheep were not saleable. For all that, I had a long spell of sheep studies in Bawden's yard. - "I know every one of 'em in the picture, " he would say. The painting of him and his white pony and sheep, with the stone wall in the background, led to one which was hung in the Academy, called "An Exmoor Shepherd", and which in spite of the sheep in it, was sold for a good figure to an American.
It may interest readers to know how pictures sometimes accidentally happen. For a week, a big landscape - painted at Oare - had been sitting on a side-table against the end wall of our sitting-room. It was of a dark hillside with gorse in the foreground. The smaller picture of Bawden and the sheep was finished. One evening, bringing it back from the farm, I placed it on the table in front of the large Oare landscape, and stepped back to see how it looked. Then I saw a new picture! A shepherd on a white pony, driving his sheep along a track by a stone wall, the dark hill above, making a fresh background, the gorse showing at either side in the foreground. I was all for beginning the new idea at once... I opened the cupboard and toasted my accidental conception in a whisky-and-soda, and soon I saw a magnificent picture growing.
This may sound like a fairy story. It was pouring with rain the next day - no new thing in Withypool. A good-sized canvas was got out, the picture begun.
Maybe I overdo little doses of approval, but they are too sweet to forget or forgo. On Private View Day, Sir Sydney Cockerell, late of the Fitzwilliam Museum, sat with me on a settee in Gallery II, facing the picture.
"It is your best this year," said he...
"What about the Cheltenham Saddling Paddock?" I asked him.
"This... is a better picture."'
(see A.J. Munnings, The Finish, Bungay, 1952, p. 105).
Several smaller versions or studies for the present picture exist, including one sold, Waddington's, Toronto, 26 November 2001, lot 189 (oil on panel, 20 x 24 in.).
Munnings describes in his autobiography how the present work, An Exmoor Shepherd came to be painted, using a local sheep farmer and friend, Froude Bawden as the model:
'Being known as a painter of horses, pictures of sheep were not saleable. For all that, I had a long spell of sheep studies in Bawden's yard. - "I know every one of 'em in the picture, " he would say. The painting of him and his white pony and sheep, with the stone wall in the background, led to one which was hung in the Academy, called "An Exmoor Shepherd", and which in spite of the sheep in it, was sold for a good figure to an American.
It may interest readers to know how pictures sometimes accidentally happen. For a week, a big landscape - painted at Oare - had been sitting on a side-table against the end wall of our sitting-room. It was of a dark hillside with gorse in the foreground. The smaller picture of Bawden and the sheep was finished. One evening, bringing it back from the farm, I placed it on the table in front of the large Oare landscape, and stepped back to see how it looked. Then I saw a new picture! A shepherd on a white pony, driving his sheep along a track by a stone wall, the dark hill above, making a fresh background, the gorse showing at either side in the foreground. I was all for beginning the new idea at once... I opened the cupboard and toasted my accidental conception in a whisky-and-soda, and soon I saw a magnificent picture growing.
This may sound like a fairy story. It was pouring with rain the next day - no new thing in Withypool. A good-sized canvas was got out, the picture begun.
Maybe I overdo little doses of approval, but they are too sweet to forget or forgo. On Private View Day, Sir Sydney Cockerell, late of the Fitzwilliam Museum, sat with me on a settee in Gallery II, facing the picture.
"It is your best this year," said he...
"What about the Cheltenham Saddling Paddock?" I asked him.
"This... is a better picture."'
(see A.J. Munnings, The Finish, Bungay, 1952, p. 105).
Several smaller versions or studies for the present picture exist, including one sold, Waddington's, Toronto, 26 November 2001, lot 189 (oil on panel, 20 x 24 in.).