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Lot 136

MUNNINGS (Sir ALFRED)

22 November 2011, 10:30 GMT
London, New Bond Street

£400 - £600

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MUNNINGS (Sir ALFRED)

Series of eight autograph letters signed (four with initials), to Jeffery Camp RA, then a young landscape artist working in his native Suffolk: writing in his accustomed forthright style, Munnings encourages Camp in his painting, extols the virtues of working en plein air (citing the examples of Constable, Crome, and Millais), urges him to get out into the countryside to work ("...No good painting in a seaside funfair like Lowestoft..."), criticises the RA ("...The Academy is filled with urbanised & suburbanised art...") and in one lengthy letter illustrated with several thumbnail sketches gives a detailed critique of one of Camp's landscapes and explains how it might be done better, 25 pages, headed paper, lightly foxed, creased, minor wear, overall in very good condition, 8vo, Dedham, 1946-1947 where dated

Footnotes

TRENCHANT ADVICE ON PAINTING, addressed to the young painter Jeffrey Camp, fellow native of Suffolk, future Royal Academician and teacher at the Slade: "You must follow the growth outwards of a tree. It is easy to see it when you really look for it. All nature radiates from centres in growth & this helps design. Growth is design. That would have been a fine picture had you known more what to do... Then again that left hand sky is intense blue & goes off to right to the sunset – Blue too raw & intense – the eye couldn't take in all that width of sky – or rather you wouldn't see such a sudden change in that length of landscape... Perhaps I can find you a brush. If you take an old hog & cut it thinner & shorter & drag it down in a flowing line that will do it... Get on with it. You have it in you & can beat the rest if you use your eyes".

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