ADAM'S Country House Collections Day II - 28th April 2026

64 495 SIR ALFRED JAMES MUNNINGS, PRA, RWS (1878-1958) Gorse and Grass Oil on canvas, 50.8 x 61cm Signed and dated 1912 lower right Provenance: Sale, Bonhams, London, 19th Century and British Impressionist Art, 20 March 2024, lot 96 € 20,000 - 30,000 Sir Alfred Munnings is recognised formally as one of Britain’s great 20th century equine painters and was later elected Pres- ident of the Royal Academy of Arts and a Knight of the Realm. A working class son of a country miller, Munnings lived among the rustics and gypsies of Suffolk and took night painting class- es at the local college before entering The Norwich School of Art and building an association with the Newlyn School of Painters where he met his first wife Florence Carter-Wood (1888-1914) and fellow artist and friend Dame Laura Knight (1877-1970). Munnings notably spent an extended period of time in 1908 honing his plein-air painting skills in the Ringland hills outside Norwich. The pictures he completed at this time evoke the principles of the Impressionists and he employed the use of a French easel to mount his canvases once a particular view caught his one good eye, having partially blinded the other on a briar as a young rambler in the hills. This defect did not de- tract from his talent however or eagerness for plein-air painting and Munnings also notably travelled for periods to Cornwall to explore the landscape there, desiring a change of scenery. In 1911 he settled in Lamorna Cove where he painted an impres- sionistic series of blossoms as a means of exploring the effects of changing sunlight light on the subject. He produced a large number of finished works and studies during this period, so affected was he by the palette of that region which so differed from the colours of his native East Anglia, many of which are now held in the Munnings Museum. No words can describe these scenic effects. On an August or September day, to lie on the sweet-smelling turf, watching sea- pinks trembling in the winds, and listening to the unceasing sound of the surf and the cry of gulls, gives peace and rest to body and soul. Nothing quite like this coast exists anywhere. There were spots where I could laze and be idle in Norfolk, but of all places, on the right day, I find myself more often longing to be back in those Cornish cliffs, lying in the sun, listening to the incessant sound of the surf. Alfred Munnings, An Artists’ Life, 1950 Gorse and Grass, painted in the year following this transfor- mative sojourn to Cornwall is clearly an attempt by the artist to apply this same studious interpretation of colour, light and texture to the overlooked palette of his own familiar homeland. Reflecting on his early training at the Norwich School, Munnings recalled a favourite edict of his headmaster “Whatever you do, remember the tone.” As we have seen with ‘Lamorna Cove, Cornwall’, ‘Blossoms, Cornwall’, various sky studies and other pure landscapes, Munnings uses light, shade and colour to im- part accurate tone above all. Only one familiar with the yellow shock of furze and the offending blue-green thorns beneath would be able to easily identify the formless gestures of the vegetation painted. Munnings, having spent much of his youth tramping over ditches with his rag-tag band of both two-legged and four-legged models would certainly feel nostalgia for the common gorse bush of his local region. The rich yellows are softened by a halo downy haze, likely hawthorn or some other blossom in the background. Meanwhile the long grasses are evoked in a striking combination of umber, ochre and blues, pulling the viewer’s eye into the undergrowth. The barbed texture of Gorse and Grass makes it very easy to imagine the young artist falling afoul of a stray briar in his youth. It’s appeal to the public is well noted, having appeared at auction with Bonhams in Christie’s in 1974, before entering a Private Col- lection in Guernsey and re-entering the market with Bonhams in a recent 19th Century British and Impressionistic Art sale in 2024. It marks an important period in Munning’s early artistic development whereby art was created for no other reason but to evoke a genuine impression of a scene through studies for his own enjoyment in lieu of any great social or financial gain. Stephanie Brennan, April 2026