DE SIR ALFRED MUNNINGS pra, rws Mendham 1878 – 1959 Dedham
Portrait of Miss Millicent Baron on Magpie
Signed lower left: A.J. MUNNINGS Oil on canvas: 30 ½ * 38 in / 77.5 * 96.5 cm Frame size: 39 * 47 in / 99.1 * 119.4 cm In an antique 18th century English corner and centre carved and gilded frame Painted in 1929 PROV EN A N CE
Private collection, UK Christie’s London, 11th October 1974, lot 186 Richard Green, London, 1974 Frost & Reed, London, 1975, no.61 Sotheby’s London, 22nd June 1977, lot 36 Mr and Mrs Montgomery Fisher, USA Richard Green, London, 2010 Private collection, USA E X H IB I T ED
London, Royal Academy, 1930, no.227 L I T ER AT URE
Sir Alfred Munnings, The Second Burst, London 1951, p.326
In the 1920s and 30s Alfred Munnings developed a flourishing career as a painter of equestrian portraits, reviving a tradition that went back to Titian and Rubens. The miller’s son from Mendham now moved in high society, racing with the Rothchilds at Deauville and rubbing shoulders with the Prince of Wales at Biarritz. A trip to America in 1924 had added that nation’s plutocrats to his list of admirers: among others, he painted a superb equestrian portrait of the New England financier Frederick Henry Prince, Master of the Pau Foxhounds (private collection, USA).
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This portrait of Millicent Baron, heiress to the Carreras tobacco empire, epitomises Munnings’s brilliance as an equestrian portraitist. He subtly integrates the young girl in effortless command of her dark bay horse with the fresh, early summer landscape of her father’s estate at Fulmer in Buckinghamshire. The creams and beiges of Millicent’s riding clothes are echoed in the blossom of the may tree and the candle-shaped flowers of the towering chestnut. The copper beech in glossy new leaf picks up the brown and midnight-blue tones of Magpie’s rippling coat. Following the practice of Stubbs, Munnings presents the horse in profile, as beautifully cut as a horse on a Parthenon frieze, emphasizing its noble gait and superb configuration. Photographs of Millicent confirm how well Munnings has caught the likeness of his human sitter. Millicent was the great-granddaughter of Bernhard Baron (1850–1929), Chairman of Carreras. Born in Brest Litovsk, Belarus, Baron emigrated to New York in 1867 and worked in a tobacco factory, sleeping at night in the tobacco sheds. Five years later he took out his first patent for a machine for making cigarettes. In 1895 he settled in London and joined the tobacco retailer and blender Carreras, remaining its Chairman until his death. With innovative marketing and famous brands like Black Cat and Craven A, Carreras prospered on the wave of fashion for cigarettes in the opening decades of the twentieth century. A major philanthropist, Bernhard Baron gave away more than £2 million to help the poor, but was still worth £5 million at his death. Millicent’s parents were Edward Levy, a great-nephew of Bernhard Baron, and Bertha Schaul, a grandchild of Bernhard Baron from the Baltimore branch of the Baron family, which had prospered in the cloth trade. Edward Levy changed his name to Baron after coming to England to work for his great-uncle and eventually succeeded him as Chairman of Carreras. The Barons moved in the chicest circles. ‘My grandmother had her salon
from impressionism to modernism
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