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SIR ALFRED JAMES MUNNINGS | A Huntsman and Hounds, Painted in 1906
Painted in 1906
Oil on Canvas
21½” x 22½” / 55 x 57cms
One of Alfred Munnings’s most impressionistic works, Huntsman and Hounds represents one of the most important early paintings by the leading british artist. With fluid brushwork and expressive colouring, this masterful depiction of animal movement belies the traditional narrative that Munnings was an artistic reactionary. An important early work that showcases both the artist’s natural ability and an experimental approach often lost in Munnings’s later paintings. One of the artist’s only paintings to depict the horse ‘head on’, this work is a brilliant study of forward movement and fluid texture.
Sir Alfred James Munnings was born in Mendham, Suffolk in 1878. His father was a miller and Munnings was brought up on a working mill with horses being part of his daily life, leading to his deepening interest in the equine world that would later propel him into becoming the foremost English twentieth-century painter of sporting pictures.
His love for the East Anglian landscape and its rural pursuits encompassed the enthralling world of gypsy travellers as well as that of hunting and horse racing, offering Munnings a wide range of subject matter that would tie in with his passion for landscape and horses.
Munnings was an entrenched traditionalist, who in his later career would take a strong stand against Modern art but in his early work his style is clearly influenced by the Impressionists with its flickering light and quick, expressive brushstrokes.
