.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
"In 1910, I think it was, Varnishing Day being over, the usual vexations that followed roused me to action. On my return I planned another, longer and more serious painting expedition to Ringland. The gorse was in bloom; to hesitate was foolish...I again contacted Drake, who had found Shrimp, and after considerable beer-drinking and arranging for the moving of the caravan, horses and ponies to Swainsthorpe, I bought another pony and a donkey: a poor, humble donkey, impervious to all our talk--so patient." (A. Munnings, An Artist's Life, Bungay 1950, pps.213-14)
Munnings was the first President (and only the third Royal Academician) to have a comprehensive retrospective of his works at Burlington House. This 1956 exhibition was an enormous success and his landscapes received critical praise. "His pure landscapes would of themselves have made a reputation. In form, colour and craftsmanship, those leading characteristics of the English school of painting, the best of them showed Munnings to be in the line of direct succession to the English masters...that 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." (R. Pound, The Englishman, A Biography of Sir Alfred Munnings, London, 1962, pp. 212-3).
Munnings was the first President (and only the third Royal Academician) to have a comprehensive retrospective of his works at Burlington House. This 1956 exhibition was an enormous success and his landscapes received critical praise. "His pure landscapes would of themselves have made a reputation. In form, colour and craftsmanship, those leading characteristics of the English school of painting, the best of them showed Munnings to be in the line of direct succession to the English masters...that 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." (R. Pound, The Englishman, A Biography of Sir Alfred Munnings, London, 1962, pp. 212-3).