22/06/2024 General News
East Anglia has always been a magnet for visual artists, with its bucolic landscapes and clean light attracting painters from the early Norwich School artists right through to present day names such as Colin Burns and Colin Self, writes Daniel Smith.
For this reason, Keys’ thrice-yearly East Anglian Art Sales are huge events for collectors and dealers right across the world. These sales are undoubtedly the most important auctions of works by East Anglian artists, and feature the biggest names from Cotman to Seago.
Already consigned for July’s sale is a dynamic work by Sir Alfred Munnings, entitled ‘The Wager’. A watercolour on paper, it depicts two gentleman racing on horseback, and has a pre-sale estimate of £800-£1,200
Munnings, who was born in Mendham in Suffolk in 1878, is best known as a painter of horses, although his rural landscapes are also extremely popular.
He was apprenticed to a Norwich printer at the age of 14, and spent the next six years designing and drawing advertising posters, attending Norwich School of Art (now Norwich University of the Arts) in his spare time. It wasn’t until the end of his apprenticeship that he decided to become a full-time painter.
Just two years later he lost his right eye in an accident, but this did nothing to dent his determination to paint. He set up a studio at Swainsthorpe in Norfolk, before moving to Cornwall in 1911.
When the First World War started, he was rejected for active military service as a result of his eye injury, but instead found himself working in Reading, processing ten of thousands of Canadian horses which were destined for the front.
As a result of this he eventually found himself in France working at a horse remount depot. His artistic talents were soon recognised, and he was employed as a war artist, in particular depicting the role of horses in the horror of the Western front.
After the war he established himself as a sculptor, collaborating with Sir Edwin Lutyens on his first public work. In 1928, at the age of 50, he was given a retrospective exhibition at Norwich Castle Museum which attracted 75,000 visitors over six weeks.
By 1944 he was president of the Royal Academy of Arts, a position he used to rail against modernism in art, infamously describing the work of artists such as Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso ‘corrupting’.
Unsurprisingly, therefore, it is for his equestrian paintings and his rural landscapes that he is best known, although is work also included many commissioned portraits, including those of King Edward VIII when he was Prince of Wales, and Queen Elizabeth with her racehorse Aureole.
Munnings died in 1959 at castle House in Dedham in Essex, which now houses the Munnings Art Museum, which is dedicated to his life and work.
Munnings is just one name which already features in next month’s sale: other top-quality works already entered include ‘Rural landscape with figures and animals by a cottage’ by Edward Robert Smythe (1810-1899), estimate £800-£1,000 and ‘Extensive river landscape with heron by water’ by Colin Burns (b1944), estimate £1,200-£1,500.
Keys’ East Anglian Art Sale and Summer Fine Sale take place at the end of July; entries are still being accepted for both sales. For more details visit www.keysauctions.co.uk.