Alfred Munnings

Sir Alfred James Munnings, is known as having been one of England's finest painters of horses, and as an outspoken critic of Modernism. Engaged by Lord Beaverbrook's Canadian War Memorials Fund after the Great War, he earned several prestigious commissions, which made him wealthy. Between 1912 and 1914 he was a member of the Newlyn School of artists. His work was part of the art competitions at the 1928 Summer Olympics, the 1932 Summer Olympics, and the 1948 Summer Olympics.

Munnings was president of the Royal Academy of Arts from 1944 until his 1949, when he was succeeded by Sir Gerald Kelly.

Alfred Munnings was born on 8 October 1878 at Mendham Mill, Mendham, Suffolk, across the River Waveney from Harleston in Norfolk. He second of the four sons of the miller John Munnings (1839-1914), who was the tenth child of a successful farmer, and his wife, Emily, née Ringer (1850-1945), one of nine children of a local farmer. Alfred grew up surrounded by the activity of a busy working mill with horses and horse-drawn carts arriving daily. After leaving Framlingham College at the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to a Norwich printer, designing and drawing advertising posters for the next six years, attending the Norwich School of Art in his spare time. When his apprenticeship ended, he became a full-time painter. The loss of sight in his right eye in an accident in 1898 did not deflect his determination to paint, and in 1899 two of his pictures were shown at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. He painted rural scenes, frequently of subjects such as Gypsies and horses. He was associated with the Newlyn School of painters, and while there met Florence Carter-Wood (1888-1914), a young horsewoman and painter. They married on 19 January 1912 but she tried to kill herself on their honeymoon and did so in 1914. Munnings bought Castle House, Dedham, in 1919, describing it as 'the house of my dreams'. He used the house and adjoining studio extensively throughout the rest of his career, and it was opened as the Munnings Art Museum in the early 1960s, after Munnings's death. Munnings remarried in 1920; his second wife was another horsewoman, Violet McBride (née Haines). There were no children from either marriage. Although his second wife encouraged him to accept commissions from society figures, Munnings became best known for his equine painting: he often depicted horses participating in hunting and racing.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023