Forest Scene: Man and Horses drawing timber

In January 1918 Munnings was commissioned by Lord Beaverbrook's Canadian War Memorials Fund to paint the actions of the Canadian Cavalry Brigade on the Western Front. For several months, he immortalised their activities in a series of fluid plein-air studies, including an equestrian portrait of Major-General the Right Hon. Jack Seely on his horse Warrior, one of the inspirations for Michael Morpugo's War Horse. With the German army's advance across France and Flanders the brigade fell back and Munnings's time as a war artist seemed to be coming to an end. Ever resourceful, he displayed many of his works at the Canadian representative's headquarters where they were seen by two Colonels from the Canadian Forestry Corps and on the recommendation of Lord Lovat, their commanding officer, he was invited to record their work. Munnings later recalled 'I started afresh on another adventure – an adventure which had no danger and no risks and which took me into some beautiful parts of France' (A.J. Munnings, An Artist's Life, Bungay, 1950, p. 313).
In the forests of Normandy he witnessed the scale of their operations with the felling and processing to satisfy the relentless demand for timber for duck boards, trenches, railways and bridges that traversed the war zone. By this time the Forestry Corp had eighty-nine sawmills and Munnings remembered 'Each company had a hundred and twenty horses, all half-bred Percheron types, mostly blacks and greys. A rivalry existed between the companies as to which had the best-conditioned teams. I painted pictures of these teams at work...' (A.J. Munnings, op. cit., p. 315). The subject of the present picture is one of a small series that he painted during a two week stay in and around the forest at Dreux. Munnings remained in France until the middle of May and in a few months had produced forty-five works which were exhibited in January 1919 as part of the Canadian War Memorials Fund Art Exhibition at the Royal Academy before moving to their permanent home at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in New Brunswick, Canada. They were widely acclaimed by contemporary critics (see The Studio, February, 1919, p. 110) and probably hastened his election as A.R.A. later that year. Their success inspired him to paint replicas of some of the most popular pictures. Twenty of these, including the present work, were bought by James Putnam of Farringham House, Devon, who was a keen Munnings collector and also owner of the bull Munnings depicted in his celebrated picture The Friesan Bull now in Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool.
The first version, which has a much browner palette, is titled A Grey Team in the Forest of Dreux, Normandy whereas the present picture, with the trees depicted in leaf, was included in the artist’s retrospective exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1956.
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.