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Lot Essay
The red-coated hunter is possibly the most recognisable motif in Munnings’s œuvre. Although the sharp perspective of the single horse and rider is commonly featured, the expressionist blending of the forest, particularly the large free strokes across the forest floor, are here a unique departure from similar works. The loose definition of the horse, which below the neck takes on the same yellow and blue palette as the forest floor, shows an experimentation with colour and form.
The soft wintery light, expressed so boldly here, was a great foil for the hunting grooms Munnings liked to model, particularly against the stark red of their coats. George Curzon likely modelled for this picture, and in his first volume of his autobiography, An Artist’s Life, Munnings described the delight of painting him: 'Winter mornings and afternoons passed as, dressed in scarlet, he posed on a horse. At last I was seeing the colour of a scarlet coat in the sun, the sheen of a clipped horse, with the lighting on fences, tree-trunks, fields' (A.J. Munnings, op. cit., Bungay, 1950, p. 195). The artist exhibited a similar composition of a huntsman in a dappled wood at the Royal Academy in 1925 (fig. 1), which was sold in these Rooms on 13 December 2018, lot 100 (£1,628,750).
We are grateful to the Curatorial staff at The Munnings Art Museum for their help in preparing this catalogue entry.
This work will be included in Lorian Peralta-Ramos’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the works of Sir Alfred Munnings.
The soft wintery light, expressed so boldly here, was a great foil for the hunting grooms Munnings liked to model, particularly against the stark red of their coats. George Curzon likely modelled for this picture, and in his first volume of his autobiography, An Artist’s Life, Munnings described the delight of painting him: 'Winter mornings and afternoons passed as, dressed in scarlet, he posed on a horse. At last I was seeing the colour of a scarlet coat in the sun, the sheen of a clipped horse, with the lighting on fences, tree-trunks, fields' (A.J. Munnings, op. cit., Bungay, 1950, p. 195). The artist exhibited a similar composition of a huntsman in a dappled wood at the Royal Academy in 1925 (fig. 1), which was sold in these Rooms on 13 December 2018, lot 100 (£1,628,750).
We are grateful to the Curatorial staff at The Munnings Art Museum for their help in preparing this catalogue entry.
This work will be included in Lorian Peralta-Ramos’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the works of Sir Alfred Munnings.