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Lot Essay
The setting of The Fortune Teller may be one of the country race meetings, such as St Buryan, which Munnings frequented while living at the artists' colony at Lamorna in Cornwall between 1911 and 1914. Although he had painted gypsies in East Anglia it was the gypsy hop-pickers he encountered on visits from Cornwall to Hampshire who really fired his imagination. 'Never in my life have I been so filled with a desire to work as I was then'. The women, who would often produce wonderful hats to be painted in, made particularly good subjects. 'Nobody could beat their style of dress, with black silk apron over a full-pleated skirt, a pink or mauve blouse showing off a tough, lithe figure; strings of red beads, and wonderful earrings glinting under blue-black hair' (An Artist's Life, Bungay, 1950, p. 289).
In the present work a smiling, dark-haired gypsy woman reads the palm of a race-goer while a friend looks on. Gypsies were a common sight at race meetings and gypsy women would often wander amongst the crowds telling fortunes for money. Here the fortune teller wears a distinctive costume which obviously appealed to the artist as it appears in other paintings of this date. Dod Procter, Munnings's friend and fellow artist at Lamorna, wears precisely the same striking combination of bright yellow headscarf, white blouse, long dark skirt, white stockings and black buckled shoes in two portraits which Munnings painted of her: September Afternoon (sold Christie's, New York, I June 2001, lot 107) and Above Trevelloe Wood, Cornwall (sold Sotheby's, London, 18 June 1997, lot 43). The costume appears again in an early sketch which Munnings used for Tagg's Island, 1920 (Sir Alfred Munnings Art Museum, Dedham; see S. Booth, Sir Alfred Munnings 1878-1959, London, 1978, illustrated p. 17).
Beyond the gypsy palm-reader is an exceptionally freely painted background filled with crowds, tents and stands. The composition suggests that Munnings was familiar with William Frith's popular painting, Derby Day, 1858 (Tate Britain; see A. Noakes, William Frith, Extraordinary Victorian Painter, London, 1978, pl. 5). Featuring a group of gypsies in the centre, Derby Day is composed on the left-hand side with crowds of race-goers and tents topped with fluttering red flags, while the course stretches away in the distance beneath an extensive sky.
In the present work a smiling, dark-haired gypsy woman reads the palm of a race-goer while a friend looks on. Gypsies were a common sight at race meetings and gypsy women would often wander amongst the crowds telling fortunes for money. Here the fortune teller wears a distinctive costume which obviously appealed to the artist as it appears in other paintings of this date. Dod Procter, Munnings's friend and fellow artist at Lamorna, wears precisely the same striking combination of bright yellow headscarf, white blouse, long dark skirt, white stockings and black buckled shoes in two portraits which Munnings painted of her: September Afternoon (sold Christie's, New York, I June 2001, lot 107) and Above Trevelloe Wood, Cornwall (sold Sotheby's, London, 18 June 1997, lot 43). The costume appears again in an early sketch which Munnings used for Tagg's Island, 1920 (Sir Alfred Munnings Art Museum, Dedham; see S. Booth, Sir Alfred Munnings 1878-1959, London, 1978, illustrated p. 17).
Beyond the gypsy palm-reader is an exceptionally freely painted background filled with crowds, tents and stands. The composition suggests that Munnings was familiar with William Frith's popular painting, Derby Day, 1858 (Tate Britain; see A. Noakes, William Frith, Extraordinary Victorian Painter, London, 1978, pl. 5). Featuring a group of gypsies in the centre, Derby Day is composed on the left-hand side with crowds of race-goers and tents topped with fluttering red flags, while the course stretches away in the distance beneath an extensive sky.