The Munnings Art Museum

Each year a changing selection of 150 paintings and drawings from the museum’s significant collection of works by Sir Alfred Munnings is hung chronologically throughout eight rooms. From less familiar early apprentice poster designs to the explosive horseracing scenes for which Munnings is most well-known, the displays chart the artist’s life and six-decade career.

Marking the 250th anniversary of the Royal Academy the museum is celebrating Sir Alfred Munnings’ sixty year association with it. From his first acceptances for the Summer Exhibition in 1899, to his election as its President in 1944 and further recognition in 1956 by the rare honour of a retrospective exhibition in his own lifetime. Paintings exhibited by Munnings at the RA and owned by the museum are highlighted throughout the displays. Important letters, artefacts and photographs show the range and breadth of Munnings’ influence in his position as President.

In the early 1940s, following the requisition of his home by the military, Munnings worked and painted on Exmoor. Here he produced stunning images of the hills and rivers all around him. In 2018 a major series of these works will be included in the special exhibition Munnings and The River which explores his artistic and literary responses to the river, a subject with which he had a great affinity and which remained a constant motif throughout his life’s work.