Damning condemnations of Pablo Picasso and modernism have emerged from previously unpublished letters written by Sir Alfred Munnings, president of the Royal Academy of Arts in the 1940s.
Munnings is regarded as the finest sporting artist of the 20th century. His 1921 painting, The Red Prince Mare, became the world’s most expensive sporting painting when it sold in 2004 for $7.84m (£4.38m) at Sotheby’s New York.
But he was an outspoken critic of modern art, something that is reflected strongly in his private correspondence, which is to be sold on 28 September by Chiswick Auctions in London. The auction house describes it as “a fascinating collection of personal, witty but increasingly splenetic, letters by one of the greatest English figurative and sporting artists of the 20th century”.
In one angry scrawl, Munnings wrote of Picasso: “To hell with him. He never was a good artist. One of a group of the best … leg-pullers.”
With his passion for traditional painting, Munnings vented his fury in private letters to his like-minded friend, Thomas Bodkin, director of the National Gallery of Ireland and founding director of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham.
In another passage, he found a further excuse to attack Picasso in urging Bodkin to acquire some Dutch portraits: “If you can, do buy [the portraits]. I could go on for ever about them. I’ve never seen such perfection ... Takes you back right into the past … when things were done well. Do see them ... Only £1,500. Half the price of a blasted Piccasso! [sic] What is the world coming to?”
He poured further scorn on Herbert Read, the influential critic and modern art theorist, who recognised Picasso’s anti-war masterpiece Guernica as “a cry of outrage and horror amplified by a great genius”. For Munnings, though, Read was “worse than a menace: It is difficult to imagine anyone reading him. Will there never be any more good sound men writing about art?”
Nicholas Worskett, the head of |Chiswick Auctions’ book department, told the Guardian: “They’ve been tucked away in someone’s cupboard or desk. They’re very important. They’re written to someone who Munnings admired greatly, Professor Bodkin, both a friend and someone in the art world ... Because of that closeness, Munnings really doesn’t hold back as he might have done with someone who he didn’t know personally.”
The letters date from 1931 to 1952. More than 60 were written by Munnings. The large majority are to Bodkin. A further 50 are from various correspondents.
Worskett said: “The letters are very personal, ad hominem attacks on people like Picasso, whose names he consistently misspells in the same way that he misspells [the poet] TS Eliot’s name … It may have been part of his disapproval of these frightful modernists.”
