From the late 1940s Munnings began to frequent racecourses to paint the horses and jockeys racing and exercising. Newmarket race course, 'the most beautiful course in the world', was his favourite and he was such a popular visitor with the staff there that he had his own old horse-rubbing box for a studio and was given permission by the Clerk of the Course to drive his car to the starting post. He would sit for hours by the post recording the starts of the races which he found more fascinating than the finishes: 'to my own profession and purpose - seeing visible beauty; the grouping, the movement - colour, all dependent on the lighting, the sky. Orange satin, cerise-and-white, blue-and-yellow, emerald green - a large field waiting, waiting, regrouping. At each start, determining to retain the picture in my mind, too often an incident, something a horse is doing, distracts, and once again my purpose is thwarted'. He did not tire of the scene and wrote that 'each start is a fresh picture for me, as they have been, meeting after meeting, year after year'
(A.J. Munnings, The Finish, Suffolk, 1952, p.p. 182, 207)