Study for 'The Start'

Munnings first experienced the excitement and drama of race meetings at the beginning of his career in around 1904 and then after World War II, he increasingly focused on this subject, undertaking both steeplechasing and flat racing scenes. 'The Start' was one of his favourite compositions and he included either a finished ‘start’ painting or a group of ‘start’ sketches in nearly every exhibition of his work from 1940 until his death. As he turned away from the formal portraits that had been the heart of his work in the years before World War II, he concentrated ever more intently on the difficult task of capturing the excitement of the racecourse and spent an extraordinary amount of time studying his subject at first hand.
Munnings's house, Castle House, in Dedham was close to Newmarket, the heart of racing in England, so he could go their regularly to watch horses at exercise, or to attend races during the season. Courtesy of the clerk of the course, he even had a studio in one of the rubbing down houses and was allowed to bicycle around the grounds to view the runners.
The present lot was executed in 1948, the same year that Munnings exhibited Going to the Start at the Royal Academy (no. 18). Here, the spontaneity with which Munnings worked is captured in the rapid brushstrokes depicting the jockey, in his pink and white silks, which brilliantly evokes a sense of anticipated movement and drama. It has been suggested that the model for the jockey is Steve Donoghue, the leading jockey of the 1910s and 1920s. He was Champion jockey ten times between 1914-1923, and won the Derby on six occasions.
This work will be included in Lorian Peralta-Ramos’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the works of Sir Alfred Munnings.