Title - Coming Through The Gap(1910)

Artist - Sir Alfred James Munnings

In Coming through the Gap, Munnings's ponies are driven up over a bank by Shrimp, 'the best model I ever had' . Known as Shrimp on account of his modest height, George Fountain Page was the illegitimate son of a house-maid at Narford Hall, the home of the Fountain family near Swaffham. He was working for Drake when Munnings found him and took him on as helper and model. 'Shrimp, that utterly uneducated, wild, ageless youth, who slept underneath Drake's caravan. When not wanted, he lay on the dusty ground or grass (each came alike to him), smoked cigarettes, and played with the lesser dogs, lurchers and children. He was a good bare-back rider and sly as a fox'. He wears the outfit which Munnings ordered for him, 'On my instruction Shrimp had gone to Norwich, to a tailor in Dove Street who made clothes for the fraternity, to be measured and fitted for the usual cut of tight cord trousers and black-fronted, sleeve waistcoat - a garment of the past, a georgian relic. Cut long, with drabbet sleeves and back, a black cloth front with step collar, deep pocket-flaps and black pearl buttons, it was useful and picturesque. Shrimp, thus attired, with a yellow handkerchief round his neck, was a paintable figure.