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Lot Essay
Avington Park is set in the rich meadows of the Itchen valley, Hampshire. During the Middle Ages the land was owned by Winchester Cathedral but during the Reformation the property was seized by Henry VIII and was later sold to Edmund Clerk. His descendants lived here until 1665 when the manor was purchased by George Brydges, one of Charles II's courtiers.
In 1848, serious debt in the Brydges family forced the property to be sold to Sir John Shelley, brother of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Sir John built the unique pair of iron and glass conservatories that flank the south lawn. Avington Park remained in the hands of the Shelley family until 1952 when the contents were sold at auction and the property was acquired by the present owners.
Sir Lionel Lindsay comments, 'Munnings makes the most of trees and moving skies, of distances and effects of light. [He] has painted so long in the open air that to work indoors on a bright sunny day is almost a physical impossibility ... his imagination demands sky and meadows, the clouds moving, trees and water, and the magic of light ... Works done compeletely on the spot were to him not only truer and more satisfactory in quality of paint, but contained that harmonious relativity of 'things seen', which can best be established when one is face to face with Nature. His truth is that finer aspect of realism which is dominated by a prevailing sky: those chanceful and mysterious effects of light which come swiftly to the artist only after long years of observation and practice' (Sir L. Lindsay, Pictures of Horses and English Life, London, 1927, pp. 18-19).
This work will be included in Lorian Peralta-Ramos's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the works by Sir Alfred Munnings.
In 1848, serious debt in the Brydges family forced the property to be sold to Sir John Shelley, brother of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Sir John built the unique pair of iron and glass conservatories that flank the south lawn. Avington Park remained in the hands of the Shelley family until 1952 when the contents were sold at auction and the property was acquired by the present owners.
Sir Lionel Lindsay comments, 'Munnings makes the most of trees and moving skies, of distances and effects of light. [He] has painted so long in the open air that to work indoors on a bright sunny day is almost a physical impossibility ... his imagination demands sky and meadows, the clouds moving, trees and water, and the magic of light ... Works done compeletely on the spot were to him not only truer and more satisfactory in quality of paint, but contained that harmonious relativity of 'things seen', which can best be established when one is face to face with Nature. His truth is that finer aspect of realism which is dominated by a prevailing sky: those chanceful and mysterious effects of light which come swiftly to the artist only after long years of observation and practice' (Sir L. Lindsay, Pictures of Horses and English Life, London, 1927, pp. 18-19).
This work will be included in Lorian Peralta-Ramos's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the works by Sir Alfred Munnings.