Sir Alfred Munnings

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Munnings, Sir Alfred (1878–1959). English painter, a specialist in scenes involving horses, which he loved passionately. He was born at Mendham, Suffolk, the son of a miller and a farmer's daughter, and trained as a lithographer, 1893–8, whilst studying in the evenings at Norwich School of Art. In 1903–4 he studied at the Académie Julian, Paris. Because he had lost the sight of an eye in an accident, he was refused for combat service in the First World War, but he helped to train horses for the army and in 1917 he became an Official War Artist for the Canadian Government. In this capacity he painted the work that made his reputation—a portrait of General J. E. B. Seeley (later Lord Mottistone) mounted on his horse Warrior (NG, Ottawa). He was at the height of his popularity in the interwar years, when he cut a figure in fashionable society and was often invited to the grandest country houses to paint the owners with their horses (he was also besieged with commissions when he visited the USA in 1924). From 1944 to 1949 he was president of the Royal Academy (he beat Augustus John in the election by 24 votes to 11). He had no interest in administration or the Academy's finances and his presidency was remarkable mainly for the speech he made at the RA annual dinner in 1949, a typically rabid attack on ‘this so-called modern art', which he characterized splenetically as ‘affected juggling … damned nonsense … violent blows of nothing … foolish drolleries’ (his successor as PRA, Sir Gerald Kelly, comments in the article he wrote on Munnings for the Dictionary of National Biography that ‘from the age of 30 he suffered from painful attacks of gout, to which was sometimes attributed his explosive and lurid language'). Munnings's speech was broadcast live on radio and was a national talking-point the next day. Amazingly, one of the few works he attacked specifically was Henry Moore's serenely beautiful and fairly traditional Madonna and Child (1944) in St Matthew's Church, Northampton.

Munnings was an artist of considerable natural ability, but he became rather slick and repetitive and his continued popularity is more with lovers of horses and the countryside than with lovers of painting. His work can best be seen at Castle House, Dedham, Essex, his home from 1919, which his widow converted into a Munnings Museum. He wrote a three-volume autobiography, An Artist's Life (1950), The Second Burst (1951), and The Finish (1952); a one-volume abridgement appeared in 1955.

Munnings, Sir Alfred (b Mendham, Suffolk, 8 Oct. 1878; d Dedham, Essex, 17 July 1959). English painter, a specialist in scenes involving horses, which he loved passionately. He was at the height of his popularity in the inter-war years, when he cut a figure in fashionable society and was often invited to the grandest country houses to paint the owners with their horses (he was also besieged with commissions when he visited the USA in 1924). From 1944 to 1949 he was president of the Royal Academy (he beat Augustus John in the election by 24 votes to 11). He had no interest in administration or the Academy's finances and his presidency was remarkable mainly for a splenetic speech attacking modern art that he delivered at the RA annual dinner in 1949. It was broadcast live on radio and was a national talking point the next day. His successor as PRA, Sir Gerald Kelly, did much to restore the damage done to the Academy's prestige. Munnings was an artist of considerable natural ability, but he became rather slick and repetitive and his continued popularity is more with lovers of horses and the countryside than with lovers of painting. His work can best be seen at Castle House, Dedham, Essex, his home from 1919, which his widow converted into a Munnings Museum.

Munnings, Sir Alfred (1878–1959). English painter, a specialist in scenes involving horses. He was at the height of his popularity in the interwar years, when he cut a figure in fashionable society and was often invited to the grandest country houses to paint the owners with their horses (he was also besieged with commissions when he visited the USA in 1924). From 1944 to 1949 he was president of the Royal Academy and he became notorious for a splenetic speech attacking modern art that he delivered at the RA annual dinner in 1949. It was broadcast live on radio and was a national talking point the next day. His successor as PRA, Sir Gerald Kelly, did much to restore the damage done to the Academy's prestige. Munnings was an artist of considerable natural ability, but he became rather slick and repetitive and his continued popularity is more with lovers of horses and the countryside than with lovers of painting. His work can best be seen at Castle House, Dedham, Suffolk, his home from 1919, which his widow converted into a Munnings Museum.