arts and design

The Great British Art Tour: friends, Roma and countrymen who lent their figures

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Alfred Munnings was a man of the country. His skill as an artist developed from boyhood drawings of the everyday life he saw about him living in the heart of East Anglia. He is best known today as an equestrian painter – and as an outspoken critic of modernism. As a young man, local Gypsies, such as the Gray family, were not only his friends but, when he became an artist in his own right, his models.

Munnings was fascinated by the Gypsies and Travellers he met while exploring the country on horseback as a young man. Their unconventional lifestyle and brightly coloured clothes and wagons inspired many of his early pictures, such as the Fortune Tellers at Epsom. His Study of Mrs Mark Stevens, done on the spot, is a preparatory work for 1920’s Gypsy Life.

The previous 100 years had seen sweeping and decimating change to the countryside, and there was a fear that a whole way of life was going to be lost. Central to this were the Gypsies. Although much maligned, in the new modernity of the early 20th century they were also seen as a diverse symbol of freedom.

Typical of Munnings’ technique, the study of Mrs Stevens demonstrates his skill in the use of an impressionistic style of light and colour in portraying an excellent likeness in a short time. This would have been worked up later in his studio to produce the finished larger painting, bought from Munnings for the Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums. But the artist kept the study, and it is today a much admired part of the collection at the Munnings Art Museum, in Dedham, Essex (his former home). It is currently on display as part of the exhibition Yours With Love, AJ.

You can see more art from the Munnings Art Museum on Art UK here, and find out more on its website.

This series is brought to you in collaboration with Art UK, which brings the nation’s art together on one digital platform and tells the stories behind the art. The website shows works by 50,000 artists from more than 3,000 venues including museums, universities and hospitals as well as thousands of public sculptures. Discover the art you own here.

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