Sir Alfred James Munnings, P.R.A., R.W.S.
(British, 1878-1959)
Making a Polo Ground at Princemere
oil on canvas
signed lower right A.J. MUNNINGS
25 1/8 x 30 1/4in (63.8 x 76.8cm)
Provenance:
With Frost & Reed, London.
Sold from a Private Collection, Canada, Sothebys, New York, 7 June 2001, lot 557.

Exhibited:
Wildenstein, New York, Munnings Exhibition, November 1953.

Literature:
Alfred James Munnings, The Second Burst, Bungay, 1951, illustrated opposite p. 153.

Footnote:
Frederick Henry Prince (1859 - 1953) was an American stockbroker, investment banker and financier. He was born in Winchester, Massachusetts, the son of Frederick O. Prince, former Mayor of the city of Boston and Helen Henry Prince. A contemporary of Andrew W. Mellon, J.P. Morgan, he was a close friend of President Theodore Roosevelt and Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.

Prince owned homes on both sides of the Atlantic. In the 1890s, he purchased a 994 acre estate at Wenham, Massachusetts, that he called Princemere. A dedicated horseman, he established numerous riding trails and carriage roads on the estate. In 1932 Prince also bought the Marble House at Newport, Rhode Island from Mrs. Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont (formerly Alva Vanderbilt). Besides his home in Biarritz, Mr. Prince owned "Villa Sainte-Helene" at Pau, Pyrenees-Atlantiques, France (today the residence of the Prefet des Pyrenees-Atlantiques), where he had been Master of Foxhounds in the annual hunt for more than 25 years.

Munnings first met Prince at a Hunt dinner in Pau in 1920. He had a chance encounter with Prince and his wife Abigail while sailing to New York from Southampton on the Berengaria in 1924, on his one and only trip to North America. During the voyage Prince convinced Munnings to spend part of his trip at Princemere where he provided him with a fully equipped studio where Munnings not only painted portraits of his hosts but several of their neighbors as well.

The work offered here depicts the construction of a polo field at Princemere. The modern steam powered plow in the middle ground is juxtaposed against the teams of horses standing in the foreground perfectly illustrates the dichotomy Munnings witnessed between the modernization he distained and his nostalgia for traditional means that were disappearing before his eyes.

We are grateful to Dr Bill Teatheredge, curatorial researcher at The Munnings Art Museum for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.

This work will be included in Tradition and Modernity: the Works of Sir Alfred Munnings by Lorian Peralta-Ramos to be published 2022.

Framed 32 x 37in.

There are a few scattered very small areas of fine craquelure and very fine hairline paint cracks throughout. There are two brown dots of accretion in the upper center (just above the fence). There is some flattening to the tips of the impasto. The painting is heavily varnished, scattered small areas of the varnish have yellowed slightly throughout. The canvas is lightly buckled in the upper right section and undulates slightly throughout. There are two small areas of fluorescence along the center of the extreme top edge, the largest area measuring approximately ½ x 1 ¼ inches at its widest. There is light surface dirt and dust throughout.