Alfred James Munnings

With the outbreak of World War I in August of 1914, Munnings' painting efforts were severely curtailed. Due to blindness in his right eye, he was rejected twice from the army until, in 1917, he was recruited by fellow artist Cecil Aldin to check horses at the remount depot for mange. These two work horses were stabled nearby at Calcot Park.

Munnings' portraitist eye for detail has captured the curiosity of the two horses. Ears are pricked and both heads are slightly turned towards the viewer as if we have intruded upon the scene. The fluidity and ease of Munnings' brush as he created this work seems in contrast with the intensity of the grey horse's gaze, yet there is no doubt as to the horse's interest in the viewer.

Munnings was drawn to barn interiors housing various animals and he painted each with a limited palette as if he was experimenting with particular tonal values. In his memoirs he writes that various art teachers stressed the importance of tone and value and how all elements of a picture need to be related. In this work, Munnings used the same mauve tone to define the highlights on the bay horse's brown coat as well as shadows on the grey.

Munnings has molded the coat of the grey horse with subtle color – hints of mauve and even touches of green play on the robust muscle articulating the brute strength and substantial solidity of this creature. Although Munnings is known for flashy racehorses, this work records and pays tribute to these noble beasts who were " the life of the nation" and whose importance was minimized not long after this work was painted, with the modernization of farming.

Munnings obviously was drawn to this motif as he painted a similar work and exhibited it at the Royal Academy in 1918 and in the retrospective exhibition in 1956 (no. 134). He also painted a study of the single grey horse (sold in these rooms on May 23 1984 lot 55A). It was often customary for Munnings to paint a horse in its stable as a way to better understand the nature of his subject.

This painting was originally in the renowned Matsukata Collection in Japan, and how it came to be there is a very interesting story. Kojiro Matsukata (1865-1950) was a successful Japanese businessman, who used his personal fortune to collect European art for the purpose of exposing Western art to Japanese artists. The Matsukata Collection included major works by Rodin, Monet, Courbet, Van Gogh and Cézanne; and in fact Matsukata became a close friend of Claude Monet. During a trip to England, Matsukata also met the British painter, Frank Brangwyn (1867-1956); he was most likely introduced to Brangwyn by Yuji Okada, the manager of the London branch of the Yamanaka Shokai, a large art and antiques company. Brangwyn eventually became Matukata's most important art advisor and patron. There were even discussions about transferring Brangwyn's studio to Japan to introduce Western art to the Japanese people; a plan that never was realized due to the Great Kantō Earthquake in 1923. Certainly, Frank Brangwyn knew and admired Alfred Munnings and he no doubt encouraged Matsukata to add works by Munnings to his collection.