A.J. Munnings: An Appreciation of the Artist and a Selection of His Paintings

Sir Alfred Munnings was a major figure in the great tradition of British horse painters, which includes Ben Marshall and George Stubbs. Famous, prolific, controversial and immensely successful, Munnings was a truly self-made man: one of the great English characters of this century.

The son of an East Anglian miller, Munnings became an apprentice lithographer and then a student at the Norwich School of Art. He rose to become President of the Royal Academy, in which position he became hugely popular as a notorious scourge of modern art.

Munnings' work before the First World War was devoted to recording the English rural scene, its skies, landscapes, and characters, both human and animal. Early in 1918 he was sent as an official artist to France. On his return he began his career as a painter of racehorses in earnest.

Horses were his constant love and inspiration. He wrote of them that: "Although they have given me much trouble and endless sleepless nights, they have been my supporters, friends - my destiny in fact. Looking back at my life, interwoven with theirs - painting them, feeding them, riding them, thinking about them - I hope that I have learned something of their ways. I have never ceased trying to understand them".

Stanley Booth introduces this selection of fifty of Munnings' beautiful and representative works. After the artist's death in 1959 he helped Lady Munnings to open Castle House to the public and set up the trusts which administer the Sir Alfred Munnings Museum, of which he is a trustee.