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

Major Tommy Bouch, Master of the Belvoir
Thence by descent
Richard Green, London
Acquired from the above

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This painting is in beautiful condition. The canvas is unlined. There are three small reinforcements on the reverse, two in the center and one in the lower right. The reinforcement in the center has made a slight swelling to the canvas which if the patch were to be removed, could then be relaxed. There does not appear to be any real reason for any of these patches. There are no retouches visible either under ultraviolet light or to the naked eye and apart from two or three small dots of retouch in the snow in the lower right, there seem to be none. The picture is clearly in lovely condition.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

With the long, blue shadows cast by an early sun, the palpably wet, sloppy snow, and the unconventional composition of kennel-men and dogs heading out and away from the viewer, The Young Entry on A Snowy Road, Woolsthorpe is one of Munnings' remarkable images that follow the Belvoir Hunt. Painted in February or March of 1921, the present Young Entry  preceded the larger work of the same subject (sold in these rooms, December 2, 2005, lot 135), and was part of an extended campaign to document the daily life and behind-the-scenes activities of the hounds, horses, and hunstmen associated with Belvoir Castle, the Duke of Rutland's country seat in Leicestershire.

The commission for the Belvoir Hunt pictures was given to Munnings by Major Tommy Bouch, the master of the Duke of Rutland's hounds. Bouch had been deeply impressed by Munnings' paintings of the Canadian Cavalry Brigade (to whom the artist had been attached by the British Ministry of Information throughout the first World War) which were exhibited in the Royal Academy's "War Records Exhibition" of 1919. Bouch hoped Munnings could produce an equally unusual and resplendent view of country life, and to that end he offered the artist "all the models you need -- horses, hounds, men -- all day and every day. You have only to say the word, and they shall be wherever you want them. If you want a smart fellow in scarlet on a horse...if you want hounds in the kennels or in the park, or if you want a string of horses out at exercise, they shall stand on the road..." (Sir Alfred Munnings, The Second Burst, Bungay, 1951, p. 69).

Munnings had been painting fox hunting scenes since the first years of his career; but to have the facilities and dogs of the renowned Belvoir kennels available to him was an opportunity that delighted him.  Munnings spent several months living with Bouch in Woolsthorpe, prowling the kennels, reveling in the cold, foggy mornings, painting most days, but occasionally also participating himself in the hunts and races Bouch organized. Some two dozen pictures, rapid studies as well as carefully finished compositions, of dogs and horses at exercise; the commotion of point-to-point racing (open field racing); and the unguarded moments of aristocratic riders as well as common kennel boys were shown at the Alpine Club Gallery in London in late spring of 1921.

The Young Entry, A Snowy Road, Woolsthorpe depicts a kennel-man in his long white coat and two boys drafted to assist, exercising a large troop of young, untrained dogs in the early morning hours. The grand lines of Belvoir Park provided a sweeping organization for Munnings' bold, patchy paint application, as he raced to set down the controlled disorder of the similarly colored dogs and the stark patterns of snow that "melted faster than he could paint it" (Munnings, p. 74).  The particular immediacy of the present work suggests it may have been the first of Young Entry versions painted en plein air.