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Lot Essay
‘There is nothing more beautiful to be seen in the countryside than the moving of hounds and huntsmen on a mild winter day. The beauty of the horses and the scarlet of their riders and the pied rhythm of the hounds and their excitement, among the sombreness of the leafless time, so lovely in itself, in its bareness and in its colour, are a kindling to the soul’ wrote John Masefield, the future Poet Laureate in his introduction to Munnings’ 1921 exhibition Pictures of the Belvoir Hunt and other Scenes of English Life which, including the present work, formed a series of pictures celebrating various aspects of one of England’s most distinguished hunts, established by the third Duke of Rutland in 1760.
With typical aplomb the commission was devised at a luncheon when the artist was introduced to the ebullient, cadillac-driving, Master of The Duke of Rutland’s Foxhounds, Major ‘Tommy’ Bouch. He had been impressed by Munnings’ works in the Royal Academy’s Canadian War Memorials Exhibition of 1919, and in the Spring of 1920, invited him to ‘stay with me at Woolthorpe and carry out another similar campaign’, adding ‘You shall have all the models you need, horses, hounds, men, all day and every day’. Munnings relished the commission and devoted a chapter to it in his autobiography, fondly remembering his convivial time at Woolthorpe. Many of the works he produced have become notable pictures in the artist’s oeuvre, including the Belvoir Kennels, Exercising in Snow and Exercising Hounds. Although un-identified In the Woods at Belvoir Castle may depict ‘…a smart, clean-cut, middle-aged fellow in scarlet, named Weston, on a horse in the woods below the castle…’ that Munnings recorded painting.
With typical aplomb the commission was devised at a luncheon when the artist was introduced to the ebullient, cadillac-driving, Master of The Duke of Rutland’s Foxhounds, Major ‘Tommy’ Bouch. He had been impressed by Munnings’ works in the Royal Academy’s Canadian War Memorials Exhibition of 1919, and in the Spring of 1920, invited him to ‘stay with me at Woolthorpe and carry out another similar campaign’, adding ‘You shall have all the models you need, horses, hounds, men, all day and every day’. Munnings relished the commission and devoted a chapter to it in his autobiography, fondly remembering his convivial time at Woolthorpe. Many of the works he produced have become notable pictures in the artist’s oeuvre, including the Belvoir Kennels, Exercising in Snow and Exercising Hounds. Although un-identified In the Woods at Belvoir Castle may depict ‘…a smart, clean-cut, middle-aged fellow in scarlet, named Weston, on a horse in the woods below the castle…’ that Munnings recorded painting.