Sir Alfred Munnings Part Six

4/8/2026 6:53:20 PM
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SIR ALFRED MUNNINGS

PART SIX

Throughout his life Munnings was always and forever a man of the countryside. He hated change, not just in art, but everything, and especially what was happening to the landscape. A staunch conservationist, in 1938 he worked to preserve the Stour Valley, helping to form, and becoming the first President of the Dedham Vale Society, which is still active today.

In 1956 he was one of several prominent people who joined together to raise money for the purchase of Thomas Gainsborough's home in Sudbury, Suffolk, so that it could be preserved and turned into a museum. As Vice-President of the Gainsborough's House National Appeal Committee, in 1957 he gave £1500, from the sale of his painting of Queen Elizabeth's racer Aureole being saddled, toward the purchase funds, and in January of 1958 the house was acquired for £5250. By September of that year, the Gainsborough House Society had been formed as an independent charity, which continues to oversee the home today. Gainsborough was a much-admired landscape and portrait artist of his time and is perhaps best known for his painting The Blue Boy, circa 1770......

In the Public Domain

Collection of The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens

Gainsborough's home circa 1855

Photo by Benjamin Brecknell Turner In the Public Domain

Gainsborough Home, Sudbury

In the period leading up to the war, Munnings had begun to pull back on his commissioned portrait work. This was never something he really wanted to do -- in his heart he wanted to paint the countryside and subjects of his own choosing. Relating that he was so heavily taxed and didn't need the money, in the early 1940s he began to focus more on racing subjects and following his resignation as President of the Royal Academy, he spent a good deal of time at the tracks.

His favorite was Newmarket, where the Jockey Club loaned him the use of the Southfields "rubbing down house" on the course. He used it as a little studio and place to store his canvases and painting supplies. They even installed lights in the roof for him. It was near the starting post of the Rowley Mile Course, where he spent a good deal of time studying and sketching race starts. Later he was given the rare privilege by the Clerk of the Course to drive his car right to the starting gate to make his sketches of the riders and horses gathering.

Newmarket Heath, with the King's Stables Rubbing House at the Finish of the Beacon Course by George Stubbs circa 1765

Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection In the Public Domain

Stubb's painting, above, depicting a "rubbing-down house", is one of two that he did that year that included one of the structures. There were originally four of them on the course, where horses were wiped and cooled down with rags and tufts of grass to remove sweat from their coats following a race, and to prepare them for their next run. In the 18th century, horses frequently ran up to three races in a single day. The Jockey Club is making efforts to preserve the sole remaining rubbing house at the course.

Munnings watching a race start -- 1950, unknown photographer

Lord Astor's High Stakes with Sir Gordon Richards up at Newmarket

Entranced by the color and action, he made endless sketches, leaving everything out in his studies and paintings except for the horses jostling for position and the jockeys' bright colored silks against the sky and clouds.

Sketches of starts

Although 1956 began with a stay in hospital with heart issues, it was a banner year for his artwork, beginning with a Retrospective Exhibition of his works held in the Diploma Gallery salons at Burlington House, with visitors queued out the door to Piccadilly Street. Featuring 309 of his paintings, sixty of which were landscapes, at the time he was only the third living painter to have such an honor bestowed by the Royal Academy. (Although they omitted him from their Survey of British Painters exhibition in 1987.)

The exhibit also gave some pro-modern art "critics", still simmering over his Academy speech, the opportunity to hit back with negative reviews. In 1962, his biographer Reginald Pound, after reading their articles said it could be suggested that "art criticism in our time suffers from too much thinking and too little seeing" (pg 213).

Following the close of the Diploma Gallery exhibit, many of the paintings were sent on to Wolverhampton to be hung in an exhibit at the Art Gallery, and the year finished with yet another show at the Bond Street Gallery in London. It was at the latter one that his painting of the Queen's horse Aureole sold for the sum of £1500 which Munnings donated to the Gainsborough house project. Another painting, also of Aureole sold for £1000, which he donated to the Hungarian Relief Fund

Never one to shy away from setting critics' hair on fire, one of the pieces he submitted for the Academy's Summer Exhibition that same year was the painting Does the Subject Matter?. The figures, studying some sculptures, included Sir John Rothenstein, Director of the Tate Gallery; Humphrey Brooke, Secretary of the Academy; John Mavrogordato, professor and classical scholar at the University of Oxford; Professor Thomas Bodkin, Director of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham; an anonymous lady in pink -- and his own dog, Toby. Hanging on the wall in the background are copies of some Picasso paintings. While Academy official were not happy about the piece and hung it in an inconspicuous location it drew much public attention and was the most talked about piece in the show.

Does the Subject Matter?

Also during that year, Pound, in his biography, wrote that The Times and other newspapers carried an article about "Shrimp", which Munnings read. As he had been under the impression that his former model had been killed in an air raid during the war, he was dutifully surprised and exclaimed that he "must send him a present" (pg 220). There was much talk about them getting together again, and while Jean Goodman in her bio writes an account of this happening, there doesn't seem to be evidence that they actually did before Shrimp passed away.

Photo of "Shrimp" at age 66 from the Daily Herald dated 10 May, 1956

Science Museum Group Collection Online, part of the photographic library of the Daily Herald newspaper. CC BY-SA 4.0

Continuing to be plagued with worsening gout and pain, at the end of his life Munnings suffered as well from other health issues. In addition to a heart condition, his left eye began to fail him, alternately weeping so that it made it difficult for him to stand back to judge his canvases, and then later the tear duct becoming blocked. With the joints in his hands so badly swollen that he could no longer paint, he was plagued by worsening temper, depression, and a sense of despondency. He mourned the continuing loss of the countryside to development, still railed more than ever about modern art, and the ever-increasing racket of jet airplanes sailing overhead sent him into fits.

In July 1959 he entered Essex County Hospital in Colchester briefly, returned home, and a week later, 17 July 1959 died in his sleep just shy of his 81st birthday. The week following his cremation a memorial service was held at St. James Church, Piccadilly, attended by a crowd that spilled out the door of the little building. His ashes were interred in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, where a memorial tablet was placed next to that of John Constable, the great landscape artist he so admired. Poet Laureate and friend, John Masefield, wrote the fitting lines engraved on his tablet:

O friend, how lovely are the things, the English things, you helped us to perceive

Photo courtesy of and copyright of Dr. Edward Skidelsky, University of Exeter

https://epigraphs.net

He has been labeled by segments of the art world as "blimpish", an "inebriated reactionary", a "social climber having indifferent ability".... one "expert" wrote an article in which he included an image of a painting as an example of Munnings' work, which unfortunately was actually painted by a contemporary American artist. Another critic said that Munnings wanted to "see himself against Stubbs", and that a lot of his work "looked like an illustration of Stubbs". (Munnings was actually greatly influenced by John Constable and John Singer Sargent.) His friend, the celebrated early 20th century painter Augustus John stated that he felt Munnings was greater than Stubbs, that "he made the subjects move, had greater narrative quality and his groupings were better". For Munnings the background was as important to him as the figures and in some cases Stubbs' backgrounds were painted by someone other than himself. More than 35 of Munnings' paintings have sold for over one-million dollars with The Red Prince Mare bringing in a whopping $7,848,000 in 2004.

Munnings commented in his autobiography, "My intention when beginning these recollections was to forestall anyone who might tell strange things about me when I'm departed." That didn't work out exactly as he would have liked -- there is a fair amount of confusion and misinformation written about him. A few examples.....

It's been written that he was a "horse trainer" when he went to the Remount Depot during World War One -- he wasn't. Another said that he "joined" the Army -- he did not -- he was a civilian volunteer.

......that he was President of the Royal Academy until his death -- he wasn't. He resigned in 1949 and died in 1959.

..... that he was a member of the Newlyn School of Art in Cornwall -- he wasn't. He only associated with some of its members

.....that he spent five days painting in Zennor, Cornwall -- he in fact spent five weeks.

A reader posted in the comments section of a blog that Munnings had his first wife Florence buried in a pauper's grave and did not mark the tombstone -- this is not true.

The author Jonathan Smith wrote in his fictional novel Summer in February that Munnings left Lamornia never to return -- he in fact did go back again, in 1949 to unveil a relief of the artist Stanhope Forbes on the wall of Newlyn Gallery.

An author of a book about Sir Winston Churchill's art career wrote that "outrage and embarrassment" over Munnings Academy speech was so great that he was compelled to resign as President. This is incorrect -- as early as 1948 he had already made the decision to retire at the close of 1949.

It was said in the same book that the Academy Summer Exhibitions had been halted for the duration of the war and that Munnings revived them in 1947. This is incorrect -- they continued to be held during the war. It was the banquets that had been halted, and that he revived in 1949.

One writer referred to him as Alfred John Munnings, another as James Alfred Munnings.....

After his death, following his wishes, in June of 1961 Violet turned their home, where they had lived for 40 years, into a museum to make his art available for the public to enjoy. She created Castle House Trust (which manages the property) and then gave the land, the studio, and the house and its contents to the Trust in 1966. She passed away in 1971.

Violet in the studio

The museum, open from April to October of each year, is filled with his paintings, sketches and studies. There is a tearoom with a small gift shop (gifts are also available via their website) and various events are hosted on the grounds. Seeing his work in pictures in print form is nice, but seeing them in real life is another whole experience. It is a marvelous place to visit.