Alfred James Munnings

1878 - 1959
British

Postillions and Horses (Sketch for the Royal Carriage Leaving Windsor for Ascot)
oil on board, 1915
on verso signed and inscribed “Given to me by A.J. Munnings, April 1915 in Cornwall” and indistinctly and variously
9 3/4 x 13 in, 24.8 x 33 cm

Preview at: Heffel Toronto – 13 Hazelton Ave

PROVENANCE
A Gift from the Artist to a Private Collection, April 1915
By descent within the family
Modern British and Irish Paintings, Watercolours, Drawings and Sculpture, Christie’s London, October 15, 1993, lot 56
Private Collection, Toronto

Sir Alfred Munnings was born into a family of millers in Mendham, East Anglia. Horses were a natural part of everyday existence before the turn of the century, and harnessed horses made perfect subjects as they waited to deliver wagonloads of grain to his father’s mill, one of the largest in Suffolk. With pencil in hand, Munnings was a precocious artist, even producing a reasonably accomplished drawing of a harnessed horse at about age six.[1]

Apprenticing at Page Bros., a lithography company, required the boy to work quickly and accurately on the unforgiving lithographer’s stone. Consequently, he learned to visualize his intended stroke and then to set it down with deliberate and precise draughtsmanship. This practice became a hallmark of Munnings’s work, which enabled him to capture equine movement and attitude.

Another early learning experience that became a mainstay of his artistry was painting from direct observation in the open air. In the final two decades of the nineteenth century, the avant-garde Impressionists painted en plein air, capturing the ever-changing light and its reflections. Combining this practice with the deliberateness learned as a lithographer, Munnings mastered loose fluidity of line and stroke.

Although Munnings’s work illustrates a painterly flair, he was rooted in tradition. His artistic philosophy was based on his staunch adherence to and profound love of Nature, like his fellow East Anglian John Constable. Truth was found in Nature and should not be distorted by modernism. In his own words, pictures were meant “to fill a man’s soul with admiration and sheer joy, not to bewilder and daze him.”[2]

In his formative years, Munnings had a fascination with fancy carriage horses in harness. He recalls in his memoirs:

A distinct scene from my earliest days, which for some strange reason remains clear and more unclouded than others, is my Aunt Rosa’s wedding, with grey horses and white rosettes. I see them trotting up to Walsham Hall, the old farmhouse where my grandmother lived.… They were no doubt quite ordinary greys, but let me cling to my dream of beauty.[3]

In 1909 and 1910, Munnings painted a series of pictures depicting carriage scenes. In the present work, two riders, called postillions, guide the horses on the near or left side of the team, in lieu of a coachman perched on the box-seat on the carriage. The wheels and hood of the open landau are just visible on the right. The solid red livery of the postillions is unknown, and the fact that the horses have docked tails establishes that these are not the Royal Windsor horses and riders. Queen Victoria banned the docking of horses’ tails and the ban has remained in place ever since, according to Buckingham Palace.

Although the circumstances surrounding this painting session are unknown, a few similar works dated 1909 point to the date of the present work. We do know that Munnings liked the composition of this sketch, for he painted a slightly larger version (sold by Sotheby’s, London, in May 1990).

The energetic brushwork and the looser handling of the horses’ legs to suggest movement indicate that the figures in the present work were painted from life. The horses are solid, moving figures with life and vitality. The impasto created by the artist’s signature style as well as the sense of movement in this work give the viewer a fresh and immediate sense of the artist’s direct observation. This practice became a notable hallmark in Munnings’s later racing scenes. A sense of motion has also been created by the figures traversing from dark to light and into relatively empty space, another practice used by Impressionist painters.

These early carriage studies such as the present picture proved to be important forerunners to some of Munnings’s most iconic compositions. In 1925, the same year he became a member of the Royal Academy, Munnings produced a series of paintings that do depict the royal family, one of which, Their Majesties’ Return from Ascot, is nearly 10 feet long (collection of the Tate in London, N04956). The horses and postillions in this large version are viewed from the same perspective as this present study. One might conclude that Munnings was pleased with his earlier work and repeated the viewpoint. Another painting from the series, purchased by Lord Fairhaven of Anglesey Abbey, shows the horses and landau set back at a slight three-quarter angle but also in profile like the present work.

We thank Lorian Peralta-Ramos, director of the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Sir Alfred James Munnings and author of The Mastery of Munnings: Sir Alfred J. Munnings, 1878 – 1959, for contributing to the above essay and confirming the authenticity of this work.

1. See Sir Alfred J. Munnings, An Artist’s Life (Museum Press, 1950), illus. opposite p. 40.

2. Ibid., 16.

3. Ibid. Listen Stop

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