Munnings said, “If you paint a tree, jolly well make it look like a tree.” Some people still say that, and I disagree. That is not art, but craft: it has been done before so often that it is no longer worth doing. I want a work of art to say something new, in a new way.
Though it is ironic that I express this commonplace sentiment, and cannot make even the expression remotely original.
Dr James Fox in his BBC4 series “British Masters” said- “I disagree. Of course I do. But given that he believed that, I love him for saying it.” It was a view widely attacked in 1949 when Munnings said it in a drunken speech which he had perhaps forgotten was broadcast on BBC radio. He was President of the Royal Academy of Arts, which still has the clinging odour of philistinism.
Munnings could paint a horse to look like a horse. This, in 1918, was “the last great cavalry charge”- the Polish cavalry against German tanks in 1939 does not count, apparently, and I find myself wondering what on Earth the Germans were doing. Had they no machine guns?
Clare Flourish 
from what I remember, and probably incorrectly, when the Gemans invaded Poland in 1939 they were greeted by a Calvary charge, so I am guessing that they didn’t have machines guns inn 1918
LikeLike
That misprint is appropriate. It was mere sacrifice for no gain, magnificent but not war.
The Light Brigade was sacrificed for a few machine guns, not a useful exchange. I do not know about this one. Added: here it is. Fifty of Flowerdew’s squadron survived.
LikeLike