LA NOBLEZA COMIENZA POR AQUÍ :: Christa Zaat

Christa Zaat



Alfred James Munnings (British painter) 1878 - 1959
The Green Caravan - Hampshire, Hop-Picking Gipsies, before 1955
oil on canvas
51 x 61 cm. (20 x 24 in.)
signed l.l.: A. J. MUNNINGS
private collection

Catalogue Note
Alfred Munnings’ paintings of gypsies are among the finest and most fascinating of his career. They are a consistent presence in his art alongside the hunting scenes and commissioned equestrian portraits. In them his bravura painting style comes to the fore, providing him a subject in which he could paint at his most free-spirited, relishing in the personalities of this community who lived outside of conventional society.
Munnings first met the hop-pickers in Binstead, near Alton, Hampshire, in 1913 where they gathered each year at the end of August, pitching tents and caravans for the duration of the picking. The present work dates from this period, and Munnings wrote of his experiences then: ‘More glamour and excitement were packed into those six weeks than a painter could well contend with. I still have visions of brown faces, black hair, earrings, black hats and black skirts; of lithe figures of women and children, of men with lurcher dogs and horses of all kinds. I still recall the never-ceasing din around their fires as the sun went down, with blue smoke curling amongst the trees. I think of crowded days of work – too swiftly gone.’ (Munnings, An Artist’s Life, 1950, p.287).
Such is the atmosphere evoked in the present work, where gypsies gather by the camp-fire at the end of the day, their distinctive green caravan prominent in the background. In this series of paintings, Munnings was clearly more pre-occupied with the nature of camp-life than the actual labour of hop-picking. His figures assume classical poses or are seen in stately arrivals or departures, such as Gypsy Life (Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums) or Arrival at Epsom Downs for Derby Week (Birmingham City Art Gallery). In so doing, Munnings removes any question of whether these characters could be considered worthy of fine art. In Arrival at Epsom Downs for Derby Week they appear as regal as a royal procession.
In absorbing himself with gypsy life, Munnings was in fact continuing an occupation with gypsies that had begun with the Victorians; their community represented a way of life that attracted and repelled in equal measure. They could be the subject of fear and superstition while simultaneously romanticised, representing a way of life against the march of modern cities. In his article, ‘In Praise of Gypsies’ from 1907, Arthur Symons wrote, ‘To the natural man the freedom of the gypsy is like a lesson against civilization; it show him that it is still possible to live, do as one likes, thrive, be healthy, and take for one’s pattern the instinctive, untameable life of the animals’ (from Gypsy Lore Society Journal, Vol. 1, 1907-1908, p.294). In choosing gypsies as his subject, Munnings echoed the likes of painters George Clausen and Henry Herbert la Thangue who idealised and celebrated the role of rural workers threatened by modern life. As Ysanne Holt wrote, ‘The gypsy therefore figured in the roll call of endangered species alongside Clausen’s ploughman and La Thangue’s hedger (An English Idyll, p.30).
Munnings had direct experience of gypsy life having spent time roaming the countryside in a horse-drawn painted caravan together with his hired gyspy lad, Shrimp. Filled with paints and canvases, he stopped where a subject presented itself and spent his evenings camping out. By living the life of the gypsy, Munnings was able to reproduce most authentically their way of life and by not juxtaposing them with conventional figures of society in his paintings, he avoids social judgements and celebrates this way of life and the characters on their own terms.
The first owner of the painting was Avery Buxton (later Wilson upon her marriage), born in 1891 and one of seven children. The Buxtons lived in Norfolk and Munnings visited the family between 1905-10, offering informal painting classes to the girls.