Saturday 2 August 2008

The White Canoe, by Sir Alfred Munnings. Note 9

While two series of paintings usually called "The White Canoe" may not strictly speaking be described as sporting pictures, their painter, Sir Alfred Munnings, was the most important sporting artist of the 20th Century.

Recently I have been trying to disentangle which painting is which of this title. In doing so, partly by chance, I have been able to speak to two of the models that Munnings used to decoratively sit for him in his later series painted between 1938 and 1953. Among both series, a few are described in the artist's three-volume autobiography: An Artist's Life; Second Burst; and The Finish. A number were exhibited at the Royal Academy but since the RA catalogues did not at the time show dimensions this of only a little help. The slim annuals, Royal Academy Illustrated, show some of the paintings but, again, rarely give sizes.

There were at least four pictures in the first series. These were painted soon after Munnings's second marriage to Violet McBride, a noted horsewoman, who quickly brought some order to the artist's previously successful but rather racketty life. All the paintings show a white Canadian canoe on the River Stour near Castle House, Dedham, their home. The smallest of the four (12 x 16 inches) that I have been able to identify is a panel showing Violet Munnings vigorously paddling herself along the tree-lined river, right to left. Another, named The River, is a less energetic scene, again right to left, of a contemplative Violet in front with a friend paddling behind her - both are hatted. Different to the two described, the composition of both the third and fourth painting is the same, but with the movement left to right. In both, Violet is in front. In one without a hat with her friend behind, paddling, hatted. In the second both are paddling and hatted. The smaller of these two paintings was exhibited at the RA in 1924, and the larger version at the International Exhibition, Pittsburgh, in the same year.

Fourteen years later Munnings returned to this theme. There are at least six versions of this essentially same scene excepting the different models whom he used, and some changes of title. The composition is now of the canoe moving (in fact firmly staked) left to right on a hot summer afternoon. In these pictures the warm colouring, dappled light and staccato brushwork of the foliage show the artist at his impressionistic best. Five versions were exhibited at the RA: 1940 (Drifting); 1944 and 1946 (The White Canoe); 1948 (September Afternoon); 1953 (The White Canoe); and repeated in 1956, September Afternoon, 1939, Version 4. In each of these paintings there is a very pretty, dark haired girl in a red silk dress holding a pink parasol. Munnings made a number of studies of her in 1938 that he used in all his subsequent pictures in this series, since she was living in France by 1939. I am most grateful to her for providing me with much of the information on which this piece is based. The second model in each of these pictures, the paddler, varies. There were two families, friends of the artist and Violet Munnings, who lived at the opposite ends of Dedham. Their offspring, with another girl from close by, furnished the young men and women (including two pairs of brother and sister) as models in these paintings - when they were not enjoying jolly lunch parties at Castle House.

Undoubtedly there are more paintings of these scenes that may come to light. For those interested in the second series, there are examples and studies of the girl with the parasol at the Munnings Museum, Castle House, Dedham, Essex that is open to the public.