Sir Alfred Munnings - October Meeting

Limited edition Goutelette print.

Paper Size: 20 x 24 inches (50cm x 60cm)
Image Size: 16 x 20 inches (40cm x 50cm)

This painting depicts racehorses beginning to approach the start at the October Meeting at Newmarket. The horses are alive on the canvas; they prance, snort and blow, with gleaming coats gliding over the tight muscles of the equine athlete.

Munnings has captured the openness and flatness of the Rowley Course, which is used in the Spring and Autumn of each year, and you can imagine that the figures in the distance are the starter and his assistants and that the distance of the race is probably in the order of 1½ miles.

Munnings was fascinated by the racehorse and was a great racegoer, favouring, as well as Newmarket, the tracks at Sandown and Hurst Park. He painted a number of images of the start at Newmarket. This scene was typical before the introduction of the rigid starting gate in flat racing and so the start of a race was often a highly charged scramble much as it remains today in steeplechasing.