Sir Alfred James Munnings, P.R.A., R.W.S. (1878-1959)
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Sir Alfred James Munnings, P.R.A., R.W.S. (1878-1959)

Exercising the pony

Details
Sir Alfred James Munnings, P.R.A., R.W.S. (1878-1959)
Exercising the pony
signed 'A.J. MUNNINGS.' (lower left)
oil on canvas
20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm.)
Provenance
with Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York.
Private Collection, Philadelphia.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, New York, 28 October 1981, lot 231.
with Frost & Reed, London, no. 55065S, from whom purchased by the family of the present owner, 1988.
Exhibited
London, James Connoll, Gipsies [sic.] in Hampshire, 1920, no. 9, illustrated as 'Boy and Ponies'.
Special notice
Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

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Clare Keiller
Clare Keiller

Lot Essay

Munnings spent the first two decades of the 20th Century painting rural scenes of his beloved England in which the horse was an inextricable part of the landscape. Initially he painted his groom, and favoured model, Shrimp, on various ponies and horses around his home in East Anglia. After his move to Cornwall in 1911, he found other models to paint but his favourite were the gypsies in Hampshire during hop-picking season.

Every September, hundreds of gypsies and various itinerant workers would converge on Binstead in Hampshire, for six weeks to pick hops. It was a 'seething crowd of humanity'. He writes in his memoirs, that he was entranced by the colour and exotic nature of the gypsies, but it is also evident from his oeuvre, that he appreciated the more prosaic activities such as tending to their horses.

In the present work, a boy rides bareback leading another pony across a meadow with gypsy tents in the background. Despite the discreet rendering of the main tent, Munnings specifically wanted the viewer to notice it, to indicate that this is a gypsy boy. Not only is the tent positioned over the withers and shoulders of the grey pony, the animal’s white mane is blown over its neck towards the white tent. This ruffled mane disrupts what would have been a fluid line from the boy’s hat, down the pony’s neck to its hind quarters and tail. Additionally, the line of the boy’s dangling thigh, paralleling the pony’s head, again draws the eye to the tent. The skewed placement of the figures also encourages the eye into the distance again, towards the tent. Consequently, what appears to be a casual scene of a boy exercising ponies, is a carefully arranged composition.

The group walks across an uncluttered meadow yet the background is rich in subject matter. Munnings has contrasted the patchwork of ploughed fields and hedgerows and the permanence and hard work that it represents, with the carefree attitude of the boy and the transient nature of the gypsy people.

The exhibition in 1920 in which this picture was shown, further made Munnings' reputation after his initial success with his war paintings at Burlington House in 1919. Gypsies became a frequent theme for other painters, such as Dame Laura Knight and Augustus John, in the early decades of the century. Gypsies as subject matter had been depicted as early as the 18th Century, as seen in George Morland’s Woodcutter, but Munnings was one of the first painters who used them as a major theme, filling the canvas space with their presence.

We are grateful to Lorian Peralta-Ramos for her assistance in preparing this catalogue entry. This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the works of Sir Alfred Munnings.

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