Beschreibung:

SIR ALFRED JAMES MUNNINGS KCVO PRA RWS (BRITISH 1878-1959) ZENNOR HILL oil on canvas, signed (lower right), titled and attributed verso on Ian MacNicol label. 63cm x 50cm Notes : Painted circa 1913 Provenance:Charles Hepburn, Glasgow and bequeathed to his private secretary in 1971. Exhibited: Ian MacNicol Galleries, Glasgow, 10-31 October 1955, no. 29 as On the Run - Zennor Hill Munnings moved from his native East Anglia to Cornwall in 1911 and lived among the community of painters at Newlyn. Being a hunting man he went to the north coast of Cornwall and spent five weeks, from March to May on a painting 'campaign'. He describes the inspiration that he drew from the landscape around Zennor: "Zennor on the north coast of Cornwall not far from St. Ives was at the time a primitive and unspoilt village. Being in granite country where the soil was shallow huge masses of stone were built into walls; every wall on each side of every lane consisted of huge stone slabs of split granite. Each farm was divided into small fields and the stones which had been cleared from the ground was piled into walls some being half as wide as a room. Great stones of strange shapes stood near the houses on either side of the brow of the hill where the road leads to St Ives. In fact this was the most picturesque and charming place. Having seen the village more than once whilst the hounds were drawing a fox on Zennor Hill and having visited it many times with friends I was itching to get to the place and use Ned (Ned Osborn was a local man whom Munnings used as a model and groom while in Cornwall) and the horses in fresh scenes… Repeating the same work methods I always used on principle in my earlier Norfolk adventurers I at once started work. The morning after our arrival the humble Ned…appeared in white corn breeches and top boots and at about 9:30 a.m. riding Grey Tick with a mackintosh to hide his scarlet coat he came towards me up the hill where I was already planted with easel canvas and box. This was the start. What could be better? Ned shed his mackintosh. I told him to ride a little way down the hill and then come up slowly again. "Stop stop Ned! That's all right; keep where you are" Then with a twenty-by-twenty-four canvas as a feeler I began to put down my composition… Here is the scene of the painting. A grey sky; a boulder strewn hill with flat spaces of grey granite showing amongst the heather-clad sides sloping down to the moor below. Beyond that undulating moors fields and stone walls. Farther away Guava Cairn grey against the yet paler grey of the faint distant horizon beyond Morvah and through all this the Land's End road curving away out of sight. Coming up the hill with hounds was Ned on the grey the scarlet coat on low tones the black velvet cap the darkest note of colour - a splendid subject… This picture that I started out with became the principle picture of that visit. I tried various subjects …I tried a huntsman riding in the valley below the hill followed by the whole pack of hounds - a small figure in a vast landscape" (An Artist's Life pp275-277) Although this is a smaller version than the one he exhibited at the 1919 Royal Academy picture (36 x 40) no. 576 and in the 1956 retrospective exhibition no. 58 it is far more complete and precise. Munnings has captured the stark primitive setting on Zennor by reconstructing the barren winter landscape as well as the cold damp atmosphere of the region. In contrast to the hibernating foliage void of life and movement he articulates the laboured motion of the hounds and horse thrusting forward to reach the crest of the hill with fluid brushwork as if the flow of paint helps carry the figures upward. The sense of movement of the composition is further developed by the curving line of hounds and huntsmen from foreground to lower valley and which is extended by the snake-like flow of the distant road that meanders off towards Lands End passing Carn Galva in the distance. The viewer's eye