Sir Alfred Munnings PRA RWS

Munnings was born in Mendham, Suffolk in 1878 and lived and worked in Suffolk and Norfolk until he moved to Lamorna in 1908. He brought with him to Lamorna a new vitality to the artist's colony that had gathered there and at Newlyn since the 1880s. A bright extrovert, self-opinionated and surrounded by a bevy of pretty young models and students, the thirty-three year old Munnings loved the freedom that came from the remoteness of this western-most part of England. As well, the special qualities of the Cornish light and the strangeness of the rocky coast brought out some of his best work.

He married a fellow artist, Florence Edith Carter-Wood, in 1912. They had met while Florence was visiting her brother who was a student of Stanhope Forbes at Newlyn. The marriage was not happy, and Florence committed suicide in 1914.

After his time at Lamorna, Munnings served as an official war artist in France, attached to the Canadian Cavalry Brigade. Portraits painted as part of his commission led to his sudden recognition at war's end. From 1919 Munnings achieved national acclaim for paintings of royalty, mounted portraits and race meetings. He settled into the life of a society and sporting painter at Dedham in Suffolk, becoming a Royal Academician in 1926 and president of the Royal Academy in 1944, when he defeated Augustus John. In his later years he became cantankerous and extreme in his views. He accused Stanley Spencer of pornography and tried in vain to have him prosecuted. He died in 1959, having resigned his presidency of the Royal Academy ten years before, following a controversial speech in which he publicly condemned 'modern art'.