An Artist’s Life

48
SIR ALFRED MUNNINGS
Mendham 1878 – 1959 Dedham
Sidney Webster Fish on a dark bay
Signed lower left: A.J. Munnings
Oil on canvas: 30 × 32 in / 76.2 × 81.4 cm
Provenance:
The sitter;
by descent
Richard Green, London, 2003
Private collection, UK
Exhibited:
London, Richard Green, British Paintings, 2003, pp.40–42, no.15, illus. in
colour
Literature:
AJ Munnings, The Second Burst, London 1950, p.169
On loan from a private collection, UK
Munnings travelled to New York, Washington, Pittsburgh and Boston
and toured the New England coast before settling in Long Island to paint
members of the American polo team gathered for an important match
against the English attended by the Prince of Wales. He rembered: ‘These
Long Islanders were most hospitable folk. Their way of life in their homes
on well-wooded estates adjoining each other was, without doubt, beyond
description. I should want a new volume to write about them. – Of the
handsome, swarthy-looking champion polo-player, Devereux Milburn;
his lovely wife; dear Louis Stoddard, who sat for me on a famous polo
mare, Belle-of-All. Of Sydney [sic] Fish and his wife; and their home near
a pond where dwelt some enormous bullfrogs, which roared at ten o’clock
each night, keeping me awake.
‘I needed sleep, for was I not toiling on one of only two pictures painted
out of doors during my stay in Long Island, where mosquitos loved
attacking an artist, the first place of attack being the hand underneath the
palette? Fish, in blue shirt with short sleeves, sat in the afternoon sun until
his face and arms peeled. A good fellow with a sense of humour. Many
a cocktail have I had with him, and too many at parties either in Fish’s
house, or somebody’s else’s, Prohibition having nothing to do with it’ 2 .
Sidney Webster Fish was born in 1885 into an old New York family allied
to the Stuyvesants. He trained as a lawyer and then served in the First
World War. In the late 1920s Fish bought land near Carmel in California.
There he spent an increasing amount of time, riding and working cattle.
Visitors to the ranch included Charles Lindbergh, who conducted glider
trials there, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and George Gershwin,
who played duets with Sidney’s wife Olga.
The ease and grace of Munnings’s equestrian portrait amply demonstrates
why he was in such demand among East Coast socialites with a passion
for horses. The tones of beige and blue in the landscape and in Sidney
Fish’s clothing are echoed in the reflections on the flanks of the glossy
bay. Fish is depicted with informal elegance, truly at home in the wide
American landscape. The power and beauty of the horse, depicted in
classical profile, contrasts with the freely painted vigour of the dogs which
lope in the foreground. Munnings captures the personality of the sitter
and his setting with plein-air directness, making this one of the finest of
his equestrian portraits.
1 The Second Burst, p.169.