Zennor Hill, Cornwall

In his autobiography, Munnings discusses his days in Cornwall in the spring of 1913 as well as this picture in great detail. "Zennor, on the north coast of Cornwall, not far from St. Ives, was at the time a primitive and unspoilt village. Being in granite country, where the soil was shallow, huge masses of stone were built into walls; every wall on each side of every lane consisted of huge stone slabs of split granite. Each farm was divided into small fields, and the stone which had been cleared from the ground was piled into walls, some being half as wide as a room. Great stones of strange shapes stood near the houses on either side of the brow of the hill where the road leads to St. Ives. In fact, this was a most picturesque and primitive place. Having seen the village more than once whilst the hounds were drawing a fox on Zennor Hill, and having visited it many times with friends, I was itching to get to the place and use Ned (who had replaced Shrimp as the artist's groom and primary model) and the horses in fresh scenes... Repeating the same methods I always used on principle in my earlier Norfolk adventures, I at once started to work. The morning after our arrival, the humble Ned, to the surprise of Mrs. Griggs (with whom they lodged), appeared in white cord britches and top boots, and about 9:30 a.m., riding Grey Tick, with a mackintosh to hide his scarlet coat, he came towards me up the hill where I was already planted with easel, canvas, and box. This was a start. What could be better? Ned shed his mackintosh. I told him to ride a little way down the hill and then come slowly up again. 'Stop, stop, Ned! That's all right; keep where you are.' ... I began to put down my composition... Here is the scene of the painting. A grey sky; a boulder, strewn hill, with flat spaces of grey granite showing amongst the heather-clad sides sloping down to the moor below. Beyond the undulating moors, fields, and stone walls. Farther away, Guava Cairn, grey against the yet paler grey of the faint distant horizon beyond Morvah, and through all this the Land's End road curving away out of sight. Coming up the hill with hounds was Ned on the grey, the scarlet coat in low tones, the black velvet cap the darkest note of colour--a splendid subject... This picture, thirty-six by forty inches, painted on that same spot, of Ned riding up the hill with his hounds, was exhibited at the Academy the first year after the war, 1919, the year in which I was elected, and was bought by Connell of Bond Street, for what I thought was a huge sum--two hundred and fifty guineas. In 1945, when living in Withypool on Exmoor, I received a telegram from Colnaghi in Bond Street congratulating me on the sale of one of my pictures at an auction in Edinburgh for twelve hundred guineas. This was the picture painted at Zennor, and which had been bought originally for two hundred and fifty at the Academy in 1919." (op. cit., pp. 275-7)

The hunt depicted is The Western which was recognised in 1863 and run by the Bolitho family as a private pack. The late Thomas Robins Bolitho holds the record as the longest serving master of a single pack (1864-1925).

A smaller version (20 x 24 in.) of this painting is in a private collection (sold, Sotheby's London, 19 November 1980, lot 67) and another smaller painting (25 x 30 in.) of T. R. Bolitho, M.F.H., Drawing over Zennor Hill is in an American private collection.