Alfred Munnings is one of the most distinguished and best loved of all equestrian painters. He first encountered his favoured subject during the First World War: when classified as unfit to fight, Munnings was given charge of a horse processing centre for army mounts on their way to France.
Later, he became attached to the Canadian Cavalry Brigade as a war artist and painted a number of dramatic and popular paintings of the Brigade’s engagements. Thereafter, he began to specialise in equestrian portraits, and also began to work as an equestrian sculptor, at times with his friend the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens.
Born in Mendham in Suffolk in 1878, Munnings trained initially as a lithographer before entering Norwich School of Art, and for a year attended the Académie Julian in Paris. A tragic accident in 1898 caused him to lose sight in his right eye, but he persevered with painting, and later that same year had two works exhibited at the Royal Academy.
Initially he painted rural subjects, ranging from landscapes and scenes of country life to Gypsy fairs, cattle and horses. In 1910 Munnings visited the village of Lamorna in Cornwall, becoming associated with the artists of the Newlyn school. He became close friends with the artists Laura and Harold Knight, and also met his first wife Florence Carter-Wood. After the war Munnings made his home at Castle House in Dedham (since 1960 the Munnings Museum), although he also rode from a stables he kept on Exmoor.
In style Munnings’ work might be described as ‘impressionist’ while his subject matter, emphatically traditional, chronicles a world which was, by the 1940s, to some extent coming to an end, but which we might now see as the archetype of all that is considered to be quintessentially English. With an unerring eye, Munnings captures not only the thrill of the chase and the vibrancy, wit and charm of the British racing world, but also all the seasonal variations of rural life and the quirky characters who inhabited a charmed age and gave it life.
Munnings was knighted in 1944 and that same year succeeded Lutyens as President of the Royal Academy, a post he would retain for five years. In his leaving speech broadcast on the BBC he attacked Matisse, Picasso and Cezanne as the ‘corruptors’ of art. The reaction did his reputation no favours. No stranger to controversy, and with a circle of friends and patrons spanning aristocracy and celebrity, his three-volume autobiography is replete with entertaining anecdotes.