1. Alfred Munnings's work was part of the art competitions at the 1928 Summer Olympics, the 1932 Summer Olympics, and the 1948 Summer Olympics.
19 Facts About Alfred Munnings
1. 2.
Alfred Munnings was born on 8 October 1878 at Mendham Mill, Mendham, Suffolk, across the River Waveney from Harleston in Norfolk.
3.
The second of the four sons of the miller John Alfred Munnings, who was the tenth child of a successful farmer, and his wife, Emily, nee Ringer, one of nine children of a local farmer.
4.
Alfred Munnings grew up surrounded by the activity of a busy working mill with horses and horse-drawn carts arriving daily.
5.
Alfred Munnings painted rural scenes, frequently of subjects such as Gypsies and horses.
6.
Alfred Munnings was associated with the Newlyn School of painters, and while there met Florence Carter-Wood, a young horsewoman and painter.
7.
Alfred Munnings bought Castle House, Dedham, in 1919, describing it as 'the house of my dreams'.
8.
Alfred Munnings used the house and adjoining studio extensively throughout the rest of his career, and it was opened as the Munnings Art Museum in the early 1960s, after Munnings's death.
9.
Alfred Munnings remarried in 1920; his second wife was another horsewoman, Violet McBride.
10.
Alfred Munnings's talent was employed as a war artist to the Canadian Cavalry Brigade, under the patronage of Max Aitken, in the latter part of the war.
11.
Alfred Munnings worked on this canvas a few thousand yards from the German front lines.
12.
Alfred Munnings was elected president of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1944.
13.
Alfred Munnings was made a Knight Bachelor in July of the same year, and was appointed a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in the 1947 New Year Honours.
14.
Alfred Munnings's presidency is best known for the valedictory speech he gave in 1949, in which he attacked modernism.
15.
An evidently inebriated Alfred Munnings claimed that the work of Cezanne, Matisse, and Picasso had corrupted art.
16.
Alfred Munnings died at Castle House, Dedham, Essex, on 17 July 1959.
17.
Alfred Munnings's ashes were interred at St Paul's Cathedral, with an epitaph by John Masefield.
18.
Alfred Munnings was portrayed by Dominic Cooper in the film Summer in February, which was released in Britain in 2013.
19.
Alfred Munnings's sporting art works have enjoyed popularity in the United Kingdom, the United States and elsewhere.