Study for 'The Vagabonds'

Munnings's 1902 Royal Academy exhibit, The Vagabonds (private collection) was worked up from a series of six watercolours and sketches, all of which appeared in the 1928 exhibition. Three of these were in the possession of Charles Bunting, who at one time owned the finished oil.

'In 1902 came The Vagabonds, another ambitious canvas, eighty by fifty inches! This picture enlarged from a watercolour, was carried through with gouache studies done on grey paper on the spot - that spot being a by-road leading to Middleton Hall, exactly where, as children, we had seen the gypsy encampment ... It was a full mile from the studio [in Mendham], my scene in the lane - just past the finger-post where the forks went left and right. The Vagabonds was meant to be a dreary, desolate picture. It never was. Here is the scene. A grass-bordered lane curving away between fences and tall poplar-trees; long puddles in the cart-tracks reflecting the sky. Coming along the lane is a straggling group of horses and gypsies, one figure seated in a cart silhouetted against the sky in the centre, another riding, bringing up the rear' (An Artist's Life, Bungay, 1950, pp. 140-41).