London, Leicester Galleries, The English Scene Horses, Racing,
Landscapes and Studies by Sir Alfred Munnings PRA., 1947, possibly
no.23, as Study No.1 for large painting “Newmarket Start”
Royal Academy, 1947;
Bournemouth, Russell-Cotes Art Gallery, An Artist’s Life
Retrospective Exhibition of Works by Sir Alfred Munnings KVCO, PPRA,
1955, probably no.889 as The Yellow Jockey: Study for a large picture of
a Newmarket Start;
Royal Academy, Retrospective Exhibition of Sir Alfred Munnings KVCO,
PPRA, 1956, no.218, as A study, painted c.1940, for the large painting
“Moving Up under Starter’s Orders (RA 1954 (230);
London, Ackermann & Sons, 1978, no.42
Literature
Alfred Munnings, The Finish, 1952, illustrated opposite p.280
Provenance
Leicester Galleries, London 1947;
Bond Street Galleries, London, by 1955;
Sotheby's, New York, 4 June 1975, lot 240;
Ackermann & Sons, London, 1978 where bought by the mother of the present
owner
Notes
‘Each start was a fresh picture for me, as they have been, meeting
after meeting, year after year’ (The Finish,1952, p.207).
In 1898 Alfred Munnings’ painting Stranded (Bristol City Art
Gallery), depicting two children in a row-boat marooned among reed-beds,
was accepted for exhibition at the Royal Academy; the first of his 230
exhibits there over his long and prestigious career. To celebrate this
first hurdle in his artistic career, the nineteen-year-old artist was
taken to a race-meeting at Bungay in Suffolk. It was the first time he
had seen an organized horse-race and it was a revelation to him. He
wrote in his memoirs; ‘...such color and action as I had never
dreamed’ (An Artist’s Life, 1950, p.65). His enthusiasm for
racing remained with him for the next sixty years and inspired some of
his most celebrated and accomplished paintings which capture the energy,
tensions and colour of race-day. He was fascinated by all aspects of
racing, from the social diversity of the spectators to the preparations
of the grooms and stable-boys. However, at the many race meetings that
Munnings attended over his career, he was most inspired by the sight of
the mounted jockeys in their vivid coloured silks jostling for position
at the starting position.
Munnings’ ability to isolate telling moments in the paddock or to
compose remarkably complex groupings of owners, trainers, and horses had
made Munnings the unquestioned master of the English race track. But it
was the most elemental pictorial problems that drove Munnings in his
paintings of horses and jockeys gathered on the starting-line that so
challenged him in the 1940s. It was the combination of timelessness and
the immediate moment that made the Newmarket ‘Starts’ so
compelling for Munnings.
When The Yellow Jockey was included in Munnings’ retrospective
exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1956, it was stated that it was
painted c.1940. Between 1940 and 1959 Munnings included a painting of
the start of a race in virtually every Royal Academy show. These
exhibits varied in the level of their finish; some were sketches for
more finished pictures. By the end of the Second World War his ‘Starts’
were the principal focus of his art. In part, Munnings had become
resistant to the commissioned work that he felt so constrained his
freedom, but more importantly after the war he was living again at his
country house in Dedham - close enough to the racecourse at Newmarket
(about 40 miles away) to allow him to visit regularly throughout the
racing season. One of the oldest racing venues in England, hallowed by
Royal sponsorship dating to the seventeenth century, Newmarket's courses
were open to the sky and the expansive heathland in a way that newer
tracks closer to London were not. In addition to watching three or four
races a day, as he often did, Munnings kept a studio right at the track
(through the courtesy of the Jockey Club) in an old rubbing barn.
Munnings frequently described the different ‘Starts’ that he
witnessed in the autobiography on which he was working concurrently, and
he ruefully acknowledged the frustrations he faced in getting the
specific character of these always-unique moments onto canvas. In an
oft-quoted passage, he summarized the experience: ‘I am standing
on the course - the most beautiful course in the world: cloudless
October sky, a faint wind from the east.... I am looking at the scene,
the old, old scene - a centuries old scene. Horses come up the course
looking like those of years ago....Bright colors in the sun just the
same as of yore.... What a sight for the artist! with the long shadows
and the lights on the boots, lights on the horses.... This is the best
picture I have ever seen - why can't I paint it?’ (Sir Alfred
Munnings, The Finish, 1952, pp.216-17). Photographs of Munnings in his
studio from these years often show him with two or three distinctive
‘Starts’ and the supporting studies before him at once.
The Yellow Jockey is one of the most completed studies with the
composition almost entirely filled by the horse and jockey seen up-close
at eye-level as though the viewer were amongst the action as one of the
other jockeys. The picture probably began as a sketch for one of the
figures in Moving Up under Starter’s Orders exhibited at the Royal
Academy in 1940. Unlike many jockeys in the ‘Silks and Satins’
series (see Peralta-Ramos, The Mastery of Munnings, 2002 p.64-65), this
jockey is not regrouping but is positioned to take off and to hold his
seat when his mount leaps into action. There is a wonderful sense of
anticipation and energy in the picture, emphasized by the loose
paintwork and the vivid colour. The jockey has taken a deep, secure
seat, tilted slightly forward with weight in his stirrups, his hands
high to move with his horse’s head when the action bursts forward.
His expression is focused ahead, waiting for the starter’s flag to
drop. Munnings was an accomplished horseman and therefore every movement
of both the horse and the rider is accurate. As a portraitist, Munnings
has captured the sitter’s emotion and intensity of concentration
as well as the horse’s excitement to run, revealed by his lathered
mouth and shoulder, flared nostrils, pricked ears, raised head-carriage
and wide-eyed expression. This is not simply an image of a man seated on
a racehorse.
Although the picture probably began as a sketch for a larger painting,
it undoubtedly holds its own as a complete picture. The scene is charged
with quivering power and tension as horses enter and leave the confines
of the canvas. The lower half of the number 6 horse is obscured from our
vision as if we are actually witnessing the event at eye level. This
idea of cropping and revealing a slice of life was used by Degas to
great effect in his ballet scenes and in this picture it creates intense
drama and expectation.
As a colorist, Munnings was inspired by the effects of changing light on
the glistening silks and the sheen on the coats of well-groomed horses.
He has perfected a harmoniously integrated picture by repeating the same
various hues throughout the work; the yellow of the jockey’s silks
is echoed in his boots and on other jockeys. It is also used to
highlight the horse’s coat. All the figures are thus, convincingly
integrated into this picture. Munnings loved horseracing but more
importantly it offered him a variety of surfaces on which to record the
effects of shifting sunlight.
We are grateful to Lorian Peralta-Ramos for her kind assistance with the
cataloguing of the present work, which will be included in her
forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the works of Sir Alfred Munnings.
