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With public art collections closed we are bringing the art to you, exploring hidden gems from across the country in partnership with Art UK. Today’s pick: Munnings’ study of Mrs Mark Stevens, in Dedham, Essex
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. Continue reading...