SIR ALFRED JAMES MUNNINGS, P.R.A., R.W.S., P.R. | SPRINGTIME, APPLE BLOSSOM WITH A MARE AND FOAL

Richard Green Gallery, London;

Lester Piggott;

Christie's, London, 5 November 1999, lot 68;

Frost & Reed, London;

Private collection.

Sunshine bathes this bucolic rural scene. Beneath the dappled sunlight shining through the blossom and leaves of an apple orchard, two ponies and poultry are taking advantage of the lush growth of the pasture where golden buttercups dot the verdant grass. Springtime, Apple Blossom with a Mare and Foal was painted in the spring of 1906 and in the same months that Munnings painted Springtime - Polly Scotchmer of the Red Lion Inn, Mendham (Bonhams, New York, 30 April 2019, lot 70).

After completing a six-year apprenticeship at the Norwich firm of lithographers, Page Brothers, the twenty-year-old Munnings returned to his family home at Mendham with the ambition to become a professional painter. This aim was almost halted when he was blinded in one eye by a thorn in a freak accident while helping a dog through a thicket. As he recuperated, he focused on painting scenes around his native village of Mendham using the local residents and their animals as his models. His pictures at this time have a delightful intimacy as he was paintings the scenes he had been surrounded by all his life. As the son of an East Anglian miller, he grew up with horses used for hauling grain wagons and carriages. In the first years of the twentieth century he embraced the traditional simplicity of the way of the life of the Norfolk farmers and gypsies, their animals and the picturesque lanes and fields of East Anglia. Modernisation was fast encroaching on this rural existence, bringing mechanized ways of farming to replace the toil of the people and animals and sweep away many of the ancient customs. Munnings became highly sensitive to the changes and sought to record them before they disappeared. Munnings was committed to the principals of plein air painting that had been extolled by the Impressionists and the artists they inspired and his spontaneity is evidenced in the broad expressive brushstrokes in the present painting which suggest movement of the blossom in the trees and the grass stirred by gentle spring breezes.The warmth of golden sunshine envelopes the scene, illuminating the greens of the vegetation and the lustre of the horses’ coats. Springtime, Apple Blossom with a Mare and Foal shares similarities with Sunny June of 1901 (Castle Museum, Norwich) which Munnings sold to James Reeve, Curator of the Norwich Castle Museum in 1902 for £85 which the twenty-three year old artist considered a vast fortune. Both pictures depict a chestnut mare and her foal surrounded by wildflowers and blossom.

Springtime, Apple Blossom with a Mare and Foal was formerly owned by the famous jockey Lester Piggot.