DOI Heft:
No. 374 (May 1924)
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21399#0262
THE ART OF MR. A. J. MUNNINGS,
A.R.A. BY G. H. MAIR, C.M.G. a
T REMEMBER very well the first time I
1 saw any paintings by Mr. A. J. Mun-
nings. The Canadian Government had com-
missioned him to paint scenes connected
with their cavalry during the war, and
some sixty paintings in oil were exhibited
somewhere in Bond Street. It was plain
that here was a man who was not only a
dead hand at giving you the quality and
spirit of a horse, but could paint landscape
as well. In their sense of movement and
their admirable gift for seising the gloss
and texture and muscular integrity of
horseflesh I had never seen anything to
equal them. None the less, the painting
of the surrounding landscape was, though
in a rather different manner, as good as any-
thing that has been done by Mr. Connard.
Plainly, Mr. Munnings, though entitled to
be regarded in the most distinguished sense
as a painter of animals, did not belong to
that class, on the fringes of art, known as
the animal painter. 0 0 0 0
Since then I have seen, I think, all his
considerable works. There is the gipsy
picture, now owned, I think, by the Aber-
deen Art Gallery. That and one or two
other pictures done on Epsom Downs show
that, though the needle of Mr. Munnings’s
compass points towards the pole of our
national racing, it oscillates, when it gets
there, between man and beast. 0 0
Inevitably, however, to any artist who
has shown himself an adept in the delinea-
tion of fact, or in what the futurist people
call representational art, comes the com-
mission. Just as Sir William Orpen does
half his work not perhaps because he par-
ticularly wants to, but because people pay
him handsomely for doing it, so Mr.
Munnings has been mainly occupied since
the war in the painting of commissioned
portraits of horses and of men on horses.
He has celebrated Grand National winners
and Derby winners, jockeys like Mr.
“ SERGEANT MURPHY AND TRAINER ”
BY A. J. MUNNINGS, A.R.A.
243
Vol. LXXXVII. No. 374.—May 1934.
A.R.A. BY G. H. MAIR, C.M.G. a
T REMEMBER very well the first time I
1 saw any paintings by Mr. A. J. Mun-
nings. The Canadian Government had com-
missioned him to paint scenes connected
with their cavalry during the war, and
some sixty paintings in oil were exhibited
somewhere in Bond Street. It was plain
that here was a man who was not only a
dead hand at giving you the quality and
spirit of a horse, but could paint landscape
as well. In their sense of movement and
their admirable gift for seising the gloss
and texture and muscular integrity of
horseflesh I had never seen anything to
equal them. None the less, the painting
of the surrounding landscape was, though
in a rather different manner, as good as any-
thing that has been done by Mr. Connard.
Plainly, Mr. Munnings, though entitled to
be regarded in the most distinguished sense
as a painter of animals, did not belong to
that class, on the fringes of art, known as
the animal painter. 0 0 0 0
Since then I have seen, I think, all his
considerable works. There is the gipsy
picture, now owned, I think, by the Aber-
deen Art Gallery. That and one or two
other pictures done on Epsom Downs show
that, though the needle of Mr. Munnings’s
compass points towards the pole of our
national racing, it oscillates, when it gets
there, between man and beast. 0 0
Inevitably, however, to any artist who
has shown himself an adept in the delinea-
tion of fact, or in what the futurist people
call representational art, comes the com-
mission. Just as Sir William Orpen does
half his work not perhaps because he par-
ticularly wants to, but because people pay
him handsomely for doing it, so Mr.
Munnings has been mainly occupied since
the war in the painting of commissioned
portraits of horses and of men on horses.
He has celebrated Grand National winners
and Derby winners, jockeys like Mr.
“ SERGEANT MURPHY AND TRAINER ”
BY A. J. MUNNINGS, A.R.A.
243
Vol. LXXXVII. No. 374.—May 1934.