In this portrait, Sir Alfred Munnings captured the essence of elegance and grandeur of life for the English aristocracy in the interwar period. The gentleman is an accomplished horseman, sitting with confidence astride an elegant bay horse in a parkland landscape with imposing walls to the right and a village church in the distance. He removes his top hat as he acknowledges the viewer and engages directly with a distant audience as he rides past. It is rare for Munnings to feature his subjects looking out of the canvas as they usually look straight ahead as they ride across the scene. The unusual gesture of holding his hat as he rides past the viewer can be traced to earlier equestrian painters such as John Ferneley Senior (1782-1860), whose portrait of Mr George Marriott shows the sitter jumping a fence in the hunting field and holding his top hat in his right hand as he acknowledges the viewer.

The sitter is Robert Gould Shaw III (1898-1970), known as Bobbie, who was Nancy Astor’s eldest child from her first marriage to Robert Gould Shaw II. Waldorf Astor married Nancy when Bobbie was two years old and he grew up at the stunning country seat of Cliveden by the Thames in England, depicted in this painting. Bobbie joined the Blues and Royals Cavalry Regiment and was known as a quite brilliant horseman, winning many amateur races as a jockey. Indeed, after a win at Sandown on a horse called Lee Bridge, Munnings was commissioned to paint the horse and rider after the race – the painting was subsequently sold by Sotheby’s in 1998 after being deaccessioned from the Astor family.

However, Bobbie also suffered from alcoholism and depression, perhaps heightened by his mother’s apparent dispassion in her children and the volatility of their relationship. He was jailed for homosexuality in the summer of 1931, having chosen to face trial rather than flee to the continent. The scandal was smoothly covered up so as not to cause embarrassment to the Astors, thanks to their influence in the press. This portrait was almost certainly painted in the late-1920s or early-1930s but was strangely kept by Munnings in his studio until it was purchased by an American heiress, Mrs Cynthia Cary, to take home to her residence at Elmcourt in Newport, Rhode Island. It is possible that the portrait was refused by the Astors due to the ongoing drama of Bobbie’s imprisonment. This theory is bolstered by the fact that Munnings’ sole appearance in the Cliveden visitors’ books between 1925 and 1935 is in June 1931, the month before Bobbie was arrested.
 
The fluid and confident brushstrokes are typical of Munnings’ commissioned works of the late-1920s and early-1930s. The portrait was acquired by Cynthia Burden (1884-1966), née Hon. Cynthia Burke Roche, daughter of the 3rd Baron Fermoy, probably directly from the artist on one of her trips back to England and it is first recorded in her inventory in 1935 in their house in Long Island. The connection between the Burden family and Munnings had extended back into the 1920s when Munnings had painted Cynthia's mother-in-law, Mary Burden, in 1924 on his visit to Long Island. He mentions in his biography:

'There were Mr and Mrs Burden of Syosset, the house which was occupied by the Prince of Wales during the international polo. Dear Mrs Burden possessed a bay horse – an old favourite. I liked Mrs. Burden and her sixteen-year-old friend, the bay. What is more, her home was perfection, and she had the right taste and was the right sort, so the picture turned out well' (The Second Burst, p. 169).
 
Cynthia Burden later married Mr Guy Fairfax Cary, Sr. and they lived at Elm Court, the Bellevue Avenue home of the family for four generations. It was furnished during the early years of the 20th century by Mrs Cary with taste and discernment. She was of the generation in Newport that emerged from the Gilded Age, operating with the self-assurance and confidence in their way of life which resulted from prior generations of wealth and privilege. Her life was one of quiet luxury spent surrounded by her friends that included the socialite Janet Auchincloss and Mary Whitehouse. After her death, Guy Cary continued to live a contented life at Elm Court which remained as it had been for years. Among the paintings within Elm Court was a Munnings, then entitled Portrait of a Gentleman on a Bay Horse.
 
It is interesting to note that Mrs Guy Fairfax Cary owned another elegant equestrian portrait by Sir Henry Raeburn (1756-1823) entitled George Harley Drummond (1783-1855). Painted circa 1808-9, it depicts Mr Drummond of Stanmore, Middlesex and Drumotchty, dressed in riding clothes, standing beside his grazing bay horse, his left arm upon the saddle and holding a hunting whip in his right hand. She gifted the painting to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1949 in memory of her mother Mrs Burke Roche.

Bibliography:
A.J. Munnings, An Artist's Life, The Second Burst, The Finish, an autobiography in three volumes (London: Museum Press, 1951-2)