Footnotes

Provenance
Collection of Robert Younger, Baron Blanesburgh (1861–1946).
By descent to the present owner.
Private collection, UK.

It is likely that that the present lot was either no. 13 (In Calcot Park) or no. 15 (June Afternoon Calcot Park) exhibited in 1919 at James Connell & Sons, London, Exhibition of Paintings by A.J. Munnings.

Although Sir Alfred Munnings is better known for his equestrian paintings, his first love was painting landscapes en plein air. This is not surprising because the artist grew up in East Anglia, the base of the renowned plein air Norwich Art School of landscape painting. As an impressionable teenager before the turn of the last century, one of Munnings's earliest mentors was James Reeve, expert and significant collector of Norwich School artists (eventually the foundation of the Norwich Castle Museums collection of John Sell Cotman's paintings). Additionally, Munnings was a staunch admirer of the landscape paintings of John Constable. Consequently, through his life he sought out Nature's bounty, creating wonderous works of art from simple landscape scenes.

The present work is a rich tapestry of textures of tree foliage and blooms. Horse chestnut trees display their conical, pinkish-white blossoms in June which Munnings has articulated with a flurry of vertical strokes amid impressionistic sweeps of green. With more summary execution, other species of trees are depicted as if shimmering in a slight breeze. To add further interest the wooden slates of the fencing and remaining tree stumps flanking the main chestnut tree, echo the verticality of the chestnut flower clusters.

Although Munnings has never specified using artistic symbolism in his works, 19th century symbolism used in Constable's time and known to Munnings, can be identified in the new life of Spring buds as a contrast with the decaying demise of the tree.

Calcot Park, a large estate, but a golf course since 1926, where Munnings, having failed to enlist as a soldier because of total blindness in one eye, worked as a 'strapper' in 1917. Munnings's job was to check the horses for diseases and parasites, before they were deployed. His friend and fellow artist, Cecil Aldin, was in charge of the Remounts Depot, checking thousands of horses for the war effort on the Continent.

This work will be included in Lorian Peralta-Ramos's forthcoming book Tradition and Modernity and the Works of Sir Alfred Munnings to be published by the National Sporting Library and Museum in Middleburg Virginia.

We are grateful to Lorian Peralta-Ramos for compiling this catalogue entry.