Article Kindly reproduced from Romany Routes Vol 5 No 2 (Copyright Romany Routes)

Romany Routes website

By Ann Hartley

Several paintings by Sir Alfred Munnings(1878-1959) were shown in the November 1999 Christie's Auction Catalogue,together with snippets of Information about the Grays who acted as his models.

Out Shooting- Depicts Nobby Gray,one of Munnings best known early models.
He posed reguarly for the artist with his wife and their son,Fred.
Munnings described the family as "Van- dwellers" and travellers they wintered in a meadow by the Red Lion, Mendham and disappeared each summer with their swinging-boats,coconut and shooting galleries.
Old Gray was really a Suffolker, a natty nice looking old bird,bald pated,clean shaven.

The Grays loved posing and still better loved seeing an old sovereign or a pint of beer. Nobby was a
philosopher ,life was full of interest to him and he knew a lot about Suffolk .
High Suffolk as he used to call it.(An Artist's Life,Bungay,1950) In the same Book Munnings also describes
a painting called ' A Country Horse Fair ' :'Bright sun,tents,crowds,and a black horse hustled by one man and held
by another. for this Gray Junior dressed himself in one of those hikey horse dealer's suits which were made for me
to my measurements at a particular kind of tailor's in Norwich. A vanished type, those masterful horse-dealers.

They roused a horse, shaking a stiff,pink,cambric flag in its face,the horse on a long halter to give it play.
A fellow In velvet and checks shouted, "Lord Wellington didn't ride one like 'im in the battle of waterloo!".