Sir Alfred James Munnings, PRA, RWS

(British, 1878-1959)

The River Dove

Footnotes

Provenance
Anon. sale, Sotheby's, New York, 1 February 2019, lot 460.
Property of an Important Collector.

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.

Munnings painted two scenes of this view of the River Dove, the present work and an earlier version dated 1909. The present work has stronger tonalities and greater luminosity in the water's reflections. It is likely that on one of Munnings' frequent forays up and down the rivers, the artist came across this quiet bend and was entranced by the blooming clover on the far shore depicted in the original painting.

Returning to this quiet painting spot, the artist captures the sun's transitory reflections on the water with rich impasto and physically sculpts the ripples' animated undulations in creamy gradations of colour. The remaining sparkle of the unseen, dwindling sun, as it breaks through the cloud cover, casts pink tones on the water. The complimentary green hues accentuate the vibrancy of the pink reflections. The fluidity of the brushwork and the rich impasto in parts of the canvas in this and the previous two works, illustrate Munnings adaptation of impressionistic vigour and fascination with light effects even on a day with muted, grey evening light.

The River Dove is an upstream tributary which flows into the Waveney near Hoxne and was another painting ground probably discovered when he ventured on river forays up and downstream from his family home in Mendham.

"... The River Waveney, which divides Norfolk from Suffolk, and which was to be my painting ground for six years after leaving the artists' room in Norwich [Art School] ... our familiar view from the mills since childhood had been across the meadows to the village... these elms domed and shaped in mass beauty, changed as the summer days happened to be cloudy, clear, hot or cool. On such a day as this they would have appeared purple through the heat haze as they looked into the sun."

Munnings had grown up along a river in the mill house at Mendham so the sound of water churning had been a constant in his childhood. He indicated in his memoirs that the sound of the river was almost medicinal and that "I often long for the river and the river scenes." (The Englishman, page 61). This ingrained childhood love of water was a strong inspiration for years to come. The combination of his love of the river and the light's complexities and patterns of changing light on rippling water must have been irresistible.

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