An Artist’s Life

28
SIR ALFRED MUNNINGS
Mendham 1878 – 1959 Dedham
Early morning, Newmarket
Signed lower right: A.J. Munnings
Oil on panel: 18 ¼ × 35 ¾ in / 46.5 × 90.8 cm
Painted circa 1947
Provenance:
Wildenstein & Co., New York
Christie’s London, 18 th March 1985, lot 255;
where purchased by Mr and Mrs Montgomery Fisher, USA
Exhibited:
On loan to Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery before 1985
Richard Green Gallery, for sale
In the summer of 1947 Sir Alfred Munnings spent many hours sketching
grooms exercising racehorses on the gallops at Newmarket. ‘Strings of
restive horses came down, turned and cantered one after the other up the
hill to meet the sun. What books did I fill with hundreds of drawings
and notes!’ 1 . The result was a series of paintings in panoramic format, the
first set out on three six-foot panels, the doors of an old wardrobe from
Lady Ludlow’s house at the top of Warren Hill, painted in a Newmarket
friend’s garden ‘to the chirruping of sparrows….and the sound of a
blacksmith’s anvil across the road’ 2 . This painting continues the theme.
Unlike Munnings’s Start pictures, which evoke the barely-controlled
energy of horses in a confined space, Early morning, Newmarket celebrates
youth – both horses and lads – moving freely in pristine morning light,
strung out like a modern-day Pantheon frieze. It can be compared with
one of the largest in this series, Coming off the Heath – early morning,
Newmarket (The Munnings Collection, The Sir Alfred Munnings Art
Museum), which also includes a blonde girl groom riding a dapple grey.
1 The Finish, p.181.
2 Op. cit., p.182.