Alfred Munnings
The great English horse painter, and the President of the Royal Academy who attacked modern art on the radio.
Alfred Munnings was born at Mendham in Suffolk in 1878, the son of a miller, and lost the sight of one eye in an accident at twenty. He painted gypsies, horse fairs, hunts and racecourses with a facility nobody disputed, worked as a war artist with the Canadian Cavalry Brigade, and became the most commercially successful equestrian painter in Britain. As President of the Royal Academy he used his 1949 farewell speech, broadcast live, to denounce Picasso, Matisse and modern art generally, which fixed his public reputation for a generation. He died in 1959 and the house at Dedham is now a museum.
A large output and a strong market, and consequently a considerable body of copies, imitations and works optimistically attributed, so the Sir Alfred Munnings Art Museum at Dedham and the standing literature are the reference points. Subject drives value here more than with most painters: racing and hunting scenes, and gypsy and horse-fair subjects, are the ones asked for. Oils are unique and are frequently on panel or board as well as canvas. Signature is usually a plain A J Munnings. Watercolours, drawings and a number of published prints also appear.
If you own a work by Alfred Munnings
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.