Sir alfred munnings autobiography examples

Pictures should ‘fill a man’s soul with admiration and sheer joy’, according to Sir Alfred Munnings, who is the subject of a new exhibition at the Osborne Studio Gallery and the National Horseracing Museum.

Octavia Pollock charts his eventful life and argues that he perhaps does not receive the credit he deserves for the enjoyment his varied and vivid work has brought.

Few with an interest in art have not heard of Sir Alfred Munnings’s 1949 resignation speech at the Royal Academy (RA).

His blistering attack on modern art, broadcast on the BBC and hailed by the public, if not the art establishment, was the climactic moment in a relationship with the RA that began in 1899, when his first two paintings, Stranded (of two of his cousins in a rowing boat) and Pike Fishing in January (of kind local