Footnotes

Provenance
The family of the sitter, by descent.

Literature
Sir Alfred Munnings, The Autobiography of Sir Alfred Munnings K.C.V.O., P.P.R.A., vol. II 'The Second Burst', 1951, p. 221.

A man sun-bathing on an island in a lake, in a park ... white swans on the lake ... The same man on a big horse, singing grand opera! ... George Schicht at Buckhurst Park on the champion show hunter of the year, a big, well-conditioned brown horse, John Peel.
(Sir Alfred Munnings, The Second Burst, 1951, p. 221.)

By the time the present lot was painted, circa 1930, Munnings was in great demand as an equestrian portraitist. The 1919 exhibition of his Canadian war paintings, shown at Burlington House -and in particular his depiction of General Seely seated on Warrior- had cemented his reputation. As Stanley Booth notes, 'these paintings demonstrated Munnings' ability to paint the rider's portrait as skilfully as the horse, and assured him of a flow of equestrian commissions, which brought him money and fame and took him into ... society and into great houses'¹.

The artist received regular commissions, aided no doubt by his marriage in 1920 to his second wife Violet, whose father owned a prestigious riding school in London, and was well connected. The Rothschild family, the Duke of Marlborough, the Duchess of Westminster and the masters of various hunts were among his patrons at this time.

The present sitter, George Schicht, is affectionately recalled by Munnings in The Second Burst. Munnings writes of the music aficionado and equestrian, 'My sitter, an Austrian, was a horseman of the Haute Ecole. Sitting in scarlet on the horse in the large stable at Buckhurst, he sang songs from 'Lohengrin' and 'Tannhauser' in a tenor voice which might have been heard miles away' ². The horse was apparently a difficult ride and often bucked but, in the portrait, John Peel is handled with complete control. Schicht's Haute Ecole background is evident to other horsemen. One can see that Schicht is sitting deeply in the saddle with a confident hold of his glorious mount.

George Schicht (1884-1961) who lived in London and was of British nationality, fared rather better than many of his family members in post WWII Europe. As heir to a family soap business that later merged with Unilever in 1927, here the entrepreneur has commissioned a historic composition for his hunting portrait. The sitter is set into a landscape with the Eridge Hunt near Buckhurst behind. This format is historic with the sitter high on the horizon giving him monumentality, and his close placement to the bottom edge enhances his importance as well as illuminating his equestrian skills.

Munnings was the first artist to take a representational art genre of the hunting portrait and add impressionistic elements such as both the hard or clear focus of horse and rider against the softer focus of the background. A painter in the open air, Munnings has masterfully captured this elegant duo under vibrant sunshine.

¹Stanley Booth, Sir Alfred Munnings 1878-1959, A centenary tribute, London, 1978, p.19.
²Sir Alfred Munnings, The Second Burst, 1951, p. 221.

We are grateful to Lorian Peralta-Ramos for her assistance in cataloguing this work.