Although Munnings is best known as an equestrian artist, he was also a prolific painter of landscapes. For his 1956 retrospective at the Royal Academy, nearly half the paintings he selected were landscapes. Exmoor seems to have captivated him, and he wrote about it in lyrical terms. In his autobiography, he described what inspired him: ‘In the spring white blackthorn blossom, and later the hawthorn…bluebells a faint mist on the slope, and songs of blackbird and thrush in the air…farther below still, the gleam of a small stream rippling over stones in the sun, its sweet silvery music ascending, mingling with the blackbird’s song’. His autobiography also includes an illustration of another watercolour very similar to this one, which is captioned ‘Bagworthy Water near Cloud Farm. My favourite watercolour.’

Although the loosely defined forms in this work make it appear almost abstract, Munnings despised Modernism and was outspoken in his condemnation of it. His views made him the most controversial President in the Royal Academy’s history, and he may have had an inkling of the trouble to come when he wrote that on receiving the letter inviting him to stand for PRA while still on Exmoor in December 1943, it ‘turned the calm stream of my existence into a whirlpool.’  

Exhibited: National Gallery, British Painting since Whistler, 1940, no. 329; Sotheby’s, London, Watercolours from Winchester College, 1988, no. 57.

Provenance: Gift of Harry Collison, 1940.