Sir Alfred MUNNINGS R.A. (1878 - 1959, English)
A Favourite Hound by Sir Alfred Munnings
c.1920
Oil on cut wooden board
38.5 x 29 inches
Price: Price on Application
This marvellous piece was made and painted by Munnings for his personal enjoyment - far from being a commissioned work, this piece is representative of his love for all things hunting. The provenance of the piece is directly from Castle Dedham, Munnings home where he had a number of these characters left around to wink at him (see the photo of the front hall at Castle House-below grandfather clock!) Munnings the great humorist and lover of animals is fully immersed in this playful and beautiful piece.
Sir Alfred James Munnings was known as one of England's finest painters of horses and as an outspoken critic of Modernism.
Alfred Munnings was born on 8 October 1878 at Mendham Mill, Mendham, Suffolk, across the River Waveney from Harleston in Norfolk to Christian parents. His father was the miller and Alfred grew up surrounded by the activity of a busy working mill with horses and horse-drawn carts arriving daily. After leaving Framlingham College at the age of 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. When his apprenticeship ended, he became a full-time painter.
The loss of sight in his right eye in an accident in 1898 did not deflect his determination to paint, and in 1899 two of his pictures were shown at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. He painted rural scenes, frequently of subjects such as Gypsies and horses. He was associated with the Newlyn School of painters, and while there met Florence Carter-Wood (1888–1914), a young horsewoman and painter. They married on 19 January 1912 but she tried to kill herself on their honeymoon and did so in 1914. Munnings bought Castle House, Dedham, in 1919, describing it as 'the house of my dreams'. He 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' death.
Munnings has been elected president of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1944, made a Knight Bachelor in 1944, and appointed a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in the 1947 New Year Honours. Munnings died at Castle House, Dedham, Essex, on 17 July 1959. After his death, his wife turned their home in Dedham into a museum of his work. The village pub in Mendham is named after him, as is a street there. His immensely popular sporting artworks have enjoyed popularity in the United States as well as the United Kingdom and elsewhere.
Our present work is a charmingly original oil representing a proudly posted hound painted on a cut wooden board.