An Artist’s Life

25
SIR ALFRED MUNNINGS
Mendham 1878 – 1959 Dedham
Huntsman crossing the Dunkery Beacon, Exmoor
Oil on canvas: 25 × 30 in / 63.5 × 76.2 cm
On loan from The Munnings Collection,
The Sir Alfred Munnings Art Museum
In the 1920s Violet Munnings bought a cottage at Withypool, Somerset,
where she spent long periods in spring and autumn. ‘From there she
went to meets, far and near, on Exmoor’ 1 , hunting with the Devon and
Somerset Staghounds. Like the moorlands round Lamorna, the open,
wild landscape was an inspiration to Munnings, who had ‘nothing to do
except paint or play about’ 2 in their Somerset retreat. He produced some
of his finest hunting landscapes, such as this example with the huntsman
dwarfed by the slope of Dunkery Hill, the highest point on Exmoor. The
brushwork very subtly evokes the long, uncultivated slopes and the cloud
shadows fleeting across the peat and bracken. The hounds are described
in a brisk shorthand and the whole scene is swept up in the impulse of
movement.
1 The Second Burst, p.86.
2 Op. cit., p.86.