Stranded - Sir Alfred Munnings - Royle Publications - Framed Print - 20"H x 16"W

Stranded - Sir Alfred Munnings - Royle Publications - Framed Print - 20"H x 16"W

The Original painting is at the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery

This painting shows the artist's young cousins, the twins Nina and Cecil. Alfred Munnings wrote: 'With these two as models, I was full of ideas, and put them in a boat… and made them row me down the mill-stream… until we came to shallows and clumps of dark green rushes with brown heads… Then bright green sedges thrust against the bows and the boy and girl began to lift an oar and push or pull it through the row-lock.

Sir Alfred James Munnings, KCVO, PRA  was known as one of England's finest painters of horses, and as an outspoken critic of Modernism. Engaged by Lord Beaverbrook's Canadian War Memorials Fund, he earned several prestigious commissions after the Great War that made him wealthy.

At fourteen he was apprenticed to a Norwich printer, designing and drawing advertising posters for the next six years, attending the Norwich School of Art in his spare time. 

He painted rural scenes, frequently of subjects such as Gypsies and horses. He was associated with the Newlyn School of painters

He became best known for his equine painting, often depicting horses involved in hunting and racing.

Munnings also painted Charge of Flowerdew's Squadron in 1918. In what is known as "the last great cavalry charge" at the Battle of Moreuil Wood.

Munnings was elected president of the Royal Academy of Art. His presidency is best known for the valedictory speech he gave in 1949, in which he attacked modernism. The broadcast was heard by millions of listeners to BBC radio. Munnings claimed that the work of Cézanne, Matisse and Picasso had corrupted art. He recalled that Winston Churchill had once said to him, "Alfred, if you met Picasso coming down the street would you join with me in kicking his ... something something?" to which Munnings said he replied, "Yes Sir, I would".