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Sir Alfred James Munnings (1878-1959)

‘The night cometh, when no man shall work’ c. 1950-53

Pencil | 25.5 x 20.2 cm (sheet of paper) | RCIN 923050

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  • A self-portrait sketch of Alfred Munnings standing as he busily paints at a canvas on an easel, beneath which is his open paint box. Beams from the setting sun radiate over the horizon behind him. Signed upper right: Alfred Munnings; and inscribed below with the title.

    On his retirement as President of the Royal Academy in 1949 Munnings set to writing his three-volume autobiography, and this notional self-portrait is a version of the design used on the dust cover and endpapers of the first volume, An Artist’s Life (1950). Another two sketches for the same design (formerly with Philip Mould) were executed on Athenaeum notepaper and dated ‘Oaks Day 1950’ (referring to the race run at Epsom Downs), neatly encapsulating the twin pillars of Munnings’s career, high society and horses. In the other studies, and the book as published, the artist is simply seen at work. Here he is working frantically, oil dripping from his palette, as the sun goes down on him and the light fades. The quotation inscribed on the drawing comes from the Gospel of St John (9:4): ‘I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work’. [The drawing may well be a play on the shovelling man prominent at the left of Ford Madox Brown's Work, in the Manchester Art Gallery, which has the same quotation inscribed on the frame.]

    The drawing formed part of the Royal Academy Gift to The Queen on her Coronation in 1953, and is probably a reworking of Munnings’ earlier image rather than a rejected version of the 1950 design.

    Text adapted from Portrait of the Artist, London, 2016
    Provenance

    Presented as part of Her Majesty's Coronation Gift from the Royal Academy of Arts, 1953

  • Medium and techniques

    Pencil

    Measurements

    25.5 x 20.2 cm (sheet of paper)

  • Other number(s)
    Alternative title(s)

    Title Page - 'The night cometh when no man shall work'


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