Feb-Mar 2020
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Alfred and Violet Munnings, 1920 © The Estate of Sir Alfred Munnings
Yours with Love, AJ The Munnings Art Museum presents an exhibition of previously unseen personal correspondence between the artist, Alfred Munnings and his wife, Violet Following on from the very successful 2019 exhibition, “Behind the Lines: Alfred Munnings War Artist, 1918”, the Munnings Art Museum’s 2020 exhibition will focus on the effect his war paintings had on Munnings’ immediate post-war career. His portrayals of Canadian men and horses at war received great acclaim following their exhibition at The Royal Academy in 1919. This opened up a career for him as an equestrian portraitist for the aristocracy and the rich which was to make him an artist of international renown and ultimately a knighted President of the Royal Academy. Many of the early commissioned paintings remain in private collections but the museum is delighted to have a number of them on loan for the 2020 season. They will be on display alongside working pencil, oil sketches and finished pictures from the museum’s own collection. In conjunction with this exhibition, the Museum is producing a unique book of hitherto unpublished and
generally unseen personal letters written by Munnings in the early post-war years; a selection of which will be on display alongside the commissions they relate to. The equestrian portrait commissions frequently necessitated Munnings travelling relatively long distances and staying away from home for extended periods and it was whilst away that he regularly wrote letters home to his wife Violet whom he married in 1920. The book contains a selection of over fifty letters written between 1920 and 1922 which are taken from the museum’s collection of over two hundred letters written by Munnings to his wife from 1920 to the early 1950s. These letters reveal much about Munnings himself, his personality, his opinions, interests and beliefs and his working practices; they also provide an insight into the times in which he lived and in particular the aristocratic world of his patrons. www.munningsmuseum.org.uk
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