DEDHAM.- A new exhibition in the freshly redecorated home of Sir Alfred Munnings, Munnings Art Museum, affords a chance to enjoy the remarkable handling of colour and light in his paintings. If you think you know the work of Sir Alfred Munnings (1878-1959), think again. A new exhibition of specially selected works spanning the celebrated artist’s career – from early childhood through to the last few years of his life – will reveal his extraordinary gift for observing the effect of colour and light on his subjects.

The new exhibition at Castle House in Dedham – Munnings’ home for more than 40 years – represents an opportunity to see more than 50 oil paintings, drawings, sketchbooks and prints from across seven decades, with a vast range of subject matters, including boating, fishing, horse racing, portraiture, farm animals, hunting, landscapes, humour, royalty and friends.

The earliest example on display is The Highwayman (c.1888) a watercolour he made aged just 7 or 8-years old. While among the works from his later life, Under Starter’s Orders (1952) was painted seven years before his death in 1959.

During the closed-season, the interior of the Munnings Art Museum was repainted and during this process, Director Jenny Hand and her team had the opportunity to reassess the way Castle House was presented.

She says: “We have painted all the walls in tones of grey, after discovering that Munnings always wanted his paintings hung on grey to best show them off, which we have found to be the case.”

The seasonal closure also gave them the chance to revisit the stores, containing a treasure trove of objects from Munnings’ life, many of which are now on display throughout the museum.

“The house is now even more lovely,” Jenny explains. “We’ve hung lots of previously unseen photos of Sir Alfred and his wife Violet, while also displaying items of clothing and some of their furniture to create a more homely atmosphere. We have also re-hung the paintings thematically and in chronological order, so visitors can see the development of his style in relation to particular themes or subjects, for example hunting scenes and equine studies, which he began in the early 1900s and carried on with until 1956.”

An extra treat is the special exhibition itself, Munnings: Colour and Light which takes a unique look at the technical aspect of Munnings’ work. His prodigious talent is very much made evident by The Highwayman, which depicts a figure in 18th-century costume riding a gleaming black horse, while gesturing back to a country house in the background. He painted the scene using watercolours when he was probably no older than 8-years old and it is his understanding of winter light, the horse’s hoofprints in the snow and the play of light on the horse’s fur and hooves, along with the rider’s leather boots and costume that demonstrate his nascent ability to show the play of light on his subject.

Five years later (circa 1893), as part of his training at Norwich Art School, Munnings made a sepia watercolour study of a plaster cast Camelia stem. This was common practice for students and involved close tonal study of light and shade, within a limited colour range, to create a three-dimensional effect.

His Portrait of Nelly Gray (1907) shows a woman resplendent in deep red attire, seated on a sofa that is exactly the same colour as her outfit. This was Munnings demonstrating his skills as a painter of tone. Close examination of the picture reveals that there are no white highlights. Nelly effectively emerges from the sofa by means of varying shades of the dominant red. Darker red hues outline of her figure and draped skirt, which contrast with the lighter tones for her collar, foreground and hat decoration. Her white blouse has diffused tones of red running through it and her earrings - described by Munnings as ‘gold’ - are, in fact, pink, to harmonise with the limited colour range.




Munnings once noted: “At last I was seeing the colour of a scarlet coat in the sun, the sheen of a clipped horse, with the lighting on fences, tree trunks, fields” and these words are exemplified in Hunting Morning, painted when he was working in Cornwall. Hunting Morning (1913) is a highly complex painting, as it shows the depth of Munnings’ appreciation for colour, light and shade.

It was while at Lamorna that he met Ned Osborne, the model for this painting and subsequently many of his Cornwall works. Munnings observed: “Ned had now become a useful groom, and had the right-coloured face and figure for a scarlet coat and black cap.” An individual’s complexion may seem a less obvious consideration for an artist but for Munnings it was essential. Over a decade earlier, when still at home in Mendham, he had chosen villagers as models, based on their colouring: “Teddy Holmes, … a swarthy boy with a good colour … - Jimmy Betts a pale round face, sad blue eyes … Walter Butcher’s face is the warmest and most vivid piece of colour, and I am learning a lot.”

An accompanying photograph of a sketch of Osborne, displayed near Hunting Morning, shows how the artist used dense pencil markings on Ned’s left cheek, alluding to his high colouring, which can be seen in the face of the lead rider in Hunting Morning.

Another photograph, Trevelloe Woods (2013), taken by Marcia Whiting, Curatorial Associate at the Munnings Art Museum, shows what is thought to be the location for the painting and similarly captures the characteristically sparse trees, with shafts of bright sunlight striking through the undergrowth in much the same way as Munnings depicted it.

Renowned for his great love of horses, the exhibition features several equestrian paintings. Each strikingly demonstrates Munnings’ fascination with how light played on their coats. Ponies in a Sandpit, Ringland Hills, Norfolk (c.1909) demonstrates his observational skills and experimentation with colour effects.

An article in the Eastern Daily Press, published on 10 March 1913, noted: “… not everyone can see the golden gleams in a horse’s tail flicking in the sunshine. Mr Munnings can and reveals it daringly …” While society magazine The Queen, observed: “Mr Munnings shows … that a white horse remains essentially a horse while its white coat absorbs and reflects the colour and light of its surroundings.”

The foreground ponies reflect the colours of the sandpit, shafts of highlight catch their hind quarters. The white pony Augereau, one of Munnings favourite early models, is depicted with a halo of the brightest light picked out on his mane, tail and back. Reflected hues of pink on the shoulder and along the neck appear as a diffused echo of the colour of the sand nearby, while the grassy area where he stands is reflected in his coat with green tones as shadow under the neck and belly.

Another animal subject that drew lavish praise was Pigs in the Wood, Lamorna (1912), which one reviewer described after seeing it in Munnings’ 1956 Retrospective at the Royal Academy as: “…the most remarkable and satisfying picture in this exhibition.” Adding that it was an: “admirable work, in its sense of light filtering through trees, in the extremely skilful recession, and in the understanding of the forms and movements of the sow and her litter, which are very freely painted in long, broad, swinging brush-strokes. It is a picture which must stand high among English Impressionist pictures…”

The painting also gave the artist plenty of opportunity to use one of his favourite colours, pink, in a variety of different tones. Colour and Light confirms just how often Munnings worked with pink in a variety of different scenarios, from the young woman’s dress and parasol in September Afternoon (1939), the flowers in the foreground of Garden at Withypool (c.1942) and Elizabeth II’s attire in his Study of HM The Queen for the painting of ‘HM The Queen and her racehorse Aureole, with Trainer Captain Cecil Boyde-Rochfort and jockey Eph Smith (c.1956).

“Pink is an artist’s colour!” he proclaimed when writing in connection to a painting he admired, called Too Early (1873) by French artist Jacques Joseph Tissot (1836-1902), who he held in high esteem. For his humorous Does the Subject Matter? (c.1953) Patricia Potter, the model for the painting - set in a gallery full of Modern art – stands in vivid contrast to the male figures in the composition. After she gave an interview to the Kilburn Times in 1956, it was explained that: “The men were painted into the picture before her, Pat said. She thought Sir Alfred later decided the painting needed more colour, as he had contacted her store [Selfridges] and asked for a model wearing a pink dress.”

Appropriately, Colour and Light has opened in time for summer, with longer days and, hopefully, days filled with bright sunshine. In such conditions, many visitors will recognise the simple joys seen in Tagg’s Island (1919), featuring a group of Munnings’ friends and models enjoying a sun-drenched day. The eponymous location itself is situated in the Thames, near Hampton Court Palace, and this was a work Munnings painted for his own pleasure. The composition of figures is arranged frieze-like across the picture plane. They are linked and harmonised by the application of repeated colours; greens and yellows, forming shadows and highlights. The picture is an exemplar of Munnings preoccupation with painting colour and the effects of light on his subjects: “… I am one of those artists who wants to paint pictures. The tone of a day, the light-grey or sun-on things, on horses - people.”

The Munnings Art Museum is at Castle House, the former home of the artist Sir Alfred Munnings (1878-1959) and his wife, Violet in Dedham. Described by Munnings as ‘the house of my dreams’, he lived and worked in this elegant Tudor and Georgian building for over forty years until his death in 1959. The House, garden, artist’s studio – complete with his tools - and Garden Café are set in forty acres of beautiful countryside in the Dedham Vale on the borders of Suffolk and Essex. The museum owns the largest collection of art works by this prolific East Anglian painter and former President of the Royal Academy (1944-1949).