Studio: international art (59.1913)

A. J. Mminings


“ PIGS IN A WOOD

BY A. J. MUNNINGS

monster—with its limbs of steel and its fiery entrails,
pouring steam and smoke over the sunny land,
diving with shrill screams into the darkest night—
may or may not appeal to his imagination, yet it is
no picture of that which he wants; what he needs
is a record of the great creation from which such
another could be built.

So, too, the patron of the horse painter wants an
exact record from which he can refresh his memory
and convince sceptics of the unimpeachable qualities
of his favourite hunter.

Now Mr. A. J. Munnings is a painter of horses
who brings to bear upon his subject so much wider
an outlook and so much closer a perception of
what his eyes see, that one cannot help wondering
how far his vision will be appreciated by those who
care for horse pictures.

Of course I do not mean to say that the pictures
which “A. J.” (as his friends call him) paints
present any difficulties that the simplest sportsman
could shy at. They are straightforward, honest
attempts to grapple with the world as he sees it,
and as we see it; the wind-swept, sun-cleansed, rain-
washed world, in which all sorts and conditions of
horses and ponies gallop and trot or graze on
heaths or pasture lands.

Gipsies lead them in strings over moorlands;

red-coated gentlemen lift them over bullfinches;
lads in glittering silk jackets race them over the
turf. There is no problem in them, no hankering
after some new-fangled fakement; all is above-
board and direct.

It is just this directness, this effort to escape from
the trammels of a convention which has ridden the
horse painter almost as long as his patron has
ridden the horse, which may prove a snare and a
difficulty, and it would not be the first time that
the representation of real nature would seem to be
less true or less to be desired than some constrained
and artificial representation of her : nevertheless an
artist dowered with enthusiasm for his work and a
spark of genius will by the very force of his
presentment convince the world, first, that this is
the truth, and furthermore that truth is desirable.

For Mr. Munnings, while knowing his horse well
—I mean in the matter of nuts and coupling-bars—
knows also that far subtler matter, the relation it is
bearing to all the varying, changing moodiness ot
the atmosphere; to him it is not merely the horse
but the horse in his environment that matters—
there is the poetry and the harmony.

Mr. Munnings’ art is highly temperamental. Art
is nature refracted not only through temperament
but through tradition; some natures permit of more

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