Sir Alfred J. Munnings, P.R.A., 1878-1959

Anonymous Sale, London, Christie's, March 20, 1936, lot 123,
There purchased by Mr. Harvey Ladew for 38 guineas.

Munnings’ glorious depiction of Lady Violet Munnings is an example of his equestrian portraiture at its finest.  The ease and confidence with which Lady Munnings rides out, the simplicity of her riding clothes and the elegance of her pose all symbolize an era.   At his best, Munnings’ portraits brilliantly catch a moment of English country life and reflect the mood and attitude of their time.

Munnings’ characteristically blends the representational form of his main subject with a loose, energetically executed background.  In The Afternoon Ride, Munnings’ fluid and eloquent brush describes the dramatic sky over the English downs.    The soft color and transient aspect of the sunlight and clouds reflect off of Lady Munnings’ dappled gray horse Isaac.

Munnings’ married Violet McBride, an accomplished horsewoman who had captured his attention in the Ladies Hack Class at the Richmond Horse Show.  She was an attractive woman on horseback, with a silk hat, a gardenia in her buttonhole and an “unsurpassable pose.”  Violet quickly became one of Munnings’ most valuable assets by both being his muse, as in the present work, but also more importantly by helping secure a constant stream of critical commissions through her social connections in the horse world.  With a shrewd eye for business and a confidence and belief in her husband’s genius as a painter, she assumed control over his financial affairs and encouraged Munnings to focus on his painting.

By the mid-1920s, Munnings had become a very fashionable and sought after portrait painter.  Requests to immortalize racehorses and their owners were unending and Munnings became the most sought after painter of the turf and field of the day.  Perhaps it was his portrait of HRH The Prince of Wales on Forest Witch, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1921 (formerly in the Collection of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and sold in these rooms, February 19, 1998, lot 1339), which helped to establish Munnings as the most important equestrian portrait painter of his generation.   In his autobiography, Munnings writes about painting portraits, “For me it was a portrait or nothing in the first sitting, if I failed, life was a blank.  If the portrait looked right, life was full of joy and every possibility.  Not always did unlimited sittings give good results.  My best portraits have been done quickly; at the most, three sittings."   Mary Chamot, writing a decade later could still observe that "Munnings holds the field [in sporting painting] almost alone. Perhaps the explanation is that most sporting people have little knowledge of painting and are satisfied with any sufficiently representative rendering of the subject. He is a brilliant technician, knows how to make his brush-work, as well as his colour, expressive of form and of course he has a perfect knowledge of his subject…" (M. Chamot, "Modern Painting in England", Country Life Ltd., 1937, p. 92 quoted by Kenneth McConkey, op.cit., p. 20). It is this brilliance coupled with his great love for his subject that so often resulted in his most inspired work. 

After the 1920s, Munnings painted few portraits of people and concentrated his efforts on his paintings of racehorses.  These elegant early portraits are rarely seen on the market, as most remain with the descendants of the original sitter. 

Harvey Ladew bought Munnings’ depiction of Lady Violet Munnings on a trip to London in 1936 and it has hung in his home since that time.  Ladew enjoyed a stylish life foxhunting, house-guesting with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, partying with Elsa Maxwell on yachts in the Mediterranean, crossing the desert with Lawrence of Arabia  and most significantly, creating a whimsical garden which reflects the arts of personality and humour as much as his experiences in the world.  During one of his annual fall and winter hunting tours, he first encountered a topiary box wood fox perched on a hedge as he hacked to a meet one morning. Harvey Ladew never got over that serendipitous moment and spent the rest of his days devising and revising topiary “rooms” and “hallways” with the final triumph being a boxwood pack of foxhounds and rider jumping a fence to greet one at the entrance to his farmhouse (see Fig. 1).  Ladew’s yew Hunt Scene, complete with hunters on horseback chasing hounds chasing a fox, is now an international symbol of Ladew Topiary Gardens, open to the public since 1971.   

Paintings such as The Afternoon Ride account for the importance which Munnings’ work assumed in the Edwardian and inter-war years of the last century. They form his legacy as a unique observer of English social history and a painter of great beauty. Above all, they have ensured his central place in English art, which remains unmatched by any other sporting artist of his time.

This work will be included in Lorian Peralta-Ramos’s forthcoming Munnings catalogue raisonné.