Sir Alfred James Munnings, P.R.A., R.W.S.

Going Out at Epsom was the centerpiece of a trio of racing pictures that Alfred Munnings exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1931, the culmination of two seasons of painting at Epsom Downs, site of the famed Derby Stakes. In the painting, two thoroughbreds, their jockeys up, are led from the saddling enclosure to the start line of the world famous track, while the betting public, a jockey or two, and a top-hatted owner look on.  Matching Munnings' assured command of equine form with his honest affection for the social surround of racing, Going Out at Epsom provides a masterful example of the qualities that made the artist the premier racing and hunt painter of the twentieth century.

Toward the end of his life, Munnings liked to deflect effusive praise with a quote from an un-named critic who had described the Royal Academician as 'first a landscape painter, second a pig painter and only third a horse painter.'  And certainly, as paintings elsewhere in this sale demonstrate, Munnings was indeed both a landscape painter and a pig painter par excellence. But in 1931, it was as a horse painter that he was known around the world.  Bracketing his work on the Epsom racing scenes, he undertook major commissions of a very public character:  King George presenting standards to the Royal House Cavalry in 1927 and a victory 'portrait' of Cameronian, winner of the 1931 Derby (belonging to John Dewar of distillery fame).  Just a few years earlier, Munnings himself had publicly defined his art and his ambitions when he presented The Kilkenny Horse Fair as his Diploma picture for the Royal Academy.  Along with his Epsom pictures in 1931, his Royal Academy entry that year also included a royal portrait, HRH Princess Mary, Countess of Harewood in riding costume on her gray Portumna, and a moorland fox-hunting scene.  Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the public persona of Munnings' art was an art of horses and of the people who loved, owned, hired, and rode them.

Unlike the portrait of Princess Mary, however, or the 'horse portrait' of Cameronian, the Epsom pictures were not taken on as commissions, with their character largely defined by tradition or an owner's expectations, but as speculative works born out of Munnings' own excitement at the races.  He was a regular race goer, and had been since his youth. Early in his career, he painted a number of country races; and in previous work at Epsom, he produced several scenes of the Gypsy traders who frequented Derby week.  During the mid-1920s, Munnings undertook several Newmarket race subjects.  Finally, in 1929, he geared up his entire establishment for a major Epsom campaign.  To maintain enthusiasm among the staff and handlers he would need to rely on through a long summer's work, Munnings sent his three grooms (it would be his own sizable stable of thoroughbreds and hunters that would provide the actual horses for his Epsom pictures) to attend the Derby week races (Fig. 1).

The first idea for Going Out at Epsom was almost certainly a pencil-scrawled notation on a racing card, the genesis of most of the artist's race scenes.  Then in the weeks immediately following the 1929 races, Munnings arranged with the track manager to use the empty Epsom paddocks and track for painting.  He borrowed horses and lads from a nearby stables, and probably worked up segments of what would ultimately become the Going out at Epsom composition in a number of small panels and sketches (Fig. 2).  One such work, incorrectly titled The Paddock at Ascot (see Wildenstein, A.J. Munnings: Images of Turf and Field, 1983, no. 62) depicts a pair of racehorses much as they would appear in the final work, with a top-hatted gentleman and female companion given prominence along the left; another study to which Munnings referred for the finished paintings was a careful depiction of the 'number boards' that listed races and entries.  Finally, either at Epsom, or back in his own fields and studio in Dedham, Munnings brought his several sketches together in a small panel, inscribed and dated Epsom June 1929 (see Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Paintings by A. J. Munnings, 1931, no 14), that laid out the basic scheme of two horses and riders, framed by numbers boards, and a large crowd of on-lookers held back by the notorious Epsom 'white rail'. 

Work on Going Out at Epsom, and the closely related Leaving the Paddock at Epsom Downs (Fig. 3, Sotheby's, New York, May 5, 2004) was done at Castle House, Munnings' home, in his own paddock, with his own horses, Chips (the bright bay in front) and Kaffir (the darker horse behind).  Slocombe, one of Munnings' grooms, posed for both jockeys, though Munnings had a second stablehand seated on the other horse so that he always saw two horses and two riders together.  As was his distinctive personal method, Munnings painted both large canvases concurrently, so that one was always ready for painting, as the other dried, whenever the weather suited -- Munnings was absolutely meticulous about painting under consistent light conditions.  Gradually, the two works diverged, with the smaller Leaving the Paddock at Epsom Downs, painted under a darker sky, left in a looser, more freely painted state.  Going Out at Epsom, organized in a tighter, square, format, was given a brighter sky and brought to a higher finish.  At some point, Munnings altered the relation between horses and the framing gates to give Going Out at Epsom a cleaner emphasis on the lead horse and jockey and a tension emblematic of the perfect pre-race moment.