Hunting Racing Military prints pictures books by Snaffles Cecil Aldin Lionel Edwards Gilbert Holiday Alfred Munnings Herbert Dicksee Tom Carr F.A. Stewart Maud Earl

Sir Alfred Munnings - Hunting, Racing and Military Artist

Alfred Munnings was born in Mendham, Suffolk in 1878, to an East Anglian farming family. He first indicated his artistic talent during his apprenticeship to a firm of lithographers in Norfolk, where he also studied at Norwich School of Art in the evening. By 1899 Alfred Munnings had exhibited two paintings at the Royal Academy.

After working as an official artist in the First World War, Alfred Munnings married and settled permanently at Castle House, in Dedham, Suffolk. Concentrating particularly upon equestrian work, Munnings was so successful in what was, at the time, an unfashionable field that he rose from his relatively humble beginnings to become both a knight and the President of the Royal Academy between 1944 and 1949.

Alfred Munnings was an enthusiastic horseman and most of his greatest works featured either the racecourse or the hunt. His sporting scenes have developed a reputation as being amongst the greatest of twentieth century. Munnings also painted very personal interpretations of the English countryside, as well as portraits, but these themes tended to be eclipsed by his tremendous success as a sporting artist.

Sir Alfred Munnings’s reputation was always slightly tarnished for contemporary critics because of his very blunt, strong minded personality and his opposition to the abstract work which was becoming increasingly popular but, more recently, he has received the acclaim his outstanding work deserves.

With Stubbs and Herring, Alfred Munnings is one of a trio of the greatest sporting artists of all time. His best original paintings now sell for figures in excess of £1,000,000 and a record price of £2,700,000 was paid for his painting Lord and Lady Mildmay of Flete with their Children at Christie’s in 1999.

Alfred Munnings’s work is now on display at many of the most prestigious galleries and museums in the world.

Munnings died in 1959

Alfred Munnings prints and pictures for sale