Alfred Munnings

Alfred Munnings is one of Britain’s most celebrated equine artists. Throughout his figurative practice he frequently painted rural scenes, gypsies and horses.

Born in 1878 in Suffolk, he was apprenticed to a Norwich printer in 1982 aged 14, designing and drawing advertising posters for the next six years. He attended classes at the Norwich School of Art in the evenings after work, going on to become a full-time plein-air painter despite losing the sight in his right eye aged 20. When the First World War broke out Munnings, who was unable to enlist due to his blindness in one eye, became an army horse strapper at the Remounts near Reading. He spent six months during 1918 in France as an official war artist attached to the Canadian Cavalry Brigade.

During the most high profile period of his career in the 1920s and 1930s his equestrian portraits and commissions commanded large sums of money from his patrons. He was elected president of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1944. Munnings was a fierce critic of Modernism and often expressed such opinions in public.

Alfred Munnings lived and worked in Castle House in Dedham, Essex from 1919 until his death in 1959. His former home is now The Munnings Art Museum, housing the largest collection of his works globally.