Showing posts with label Alfred Munnings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alfred Munnings. Show all posts

Sunday, February 5, 2023

Laura Knight pinxit - horses & circuses

Salvete omnes,

let us move away from Polish history tonight and canter closer to our times - XX century Britain.


when I was a kid, several times a year our town would receive a visit  from a wondering' circus on their country-wide, year long circuit - each visit being full of clowns, acrobats and above everything many animals, wild or beautiful or both - :) .
I used to love watching various wild and domestic animals perform tricks and drills, from Asiatic elephants, African lions, Siberian tigers and other wild cats, monkeys, seals, or just our old good dogs and birds doing various tricks, and finally a big number of each show;  teams of horses and equestrian acrobatics performed by most graceful and agile gymnasts on top of these well-trained and beautiful steeds.

In this spirit I wanted to bring to my blog the art of Laura Knight, British painter of the late XIX and most of the XX century, especially Ms Knight's equestrian art.

-Circuses, horses and acrobats & clowns -








-Gypsy and other  horse scenes from the bygone era -

 




I look fondly at these field plowing paintings - I did some of it when a teenager, I wanted to learn how to turn over and break the soil with a team of horses pulling a plough/plow, and I was lucky enough some of my grand-uncles had horses and used plows, be it with some nostalgia for the bygone times...  
Wiki Commons gallery image




and Alfred Munnings' canvas of Laura Knight painting :


all images are presented here under the Creative Commons licence,

Valete

Friday, July 1, 2022

Alfred Munnings - painter of horses and their riders

 Salvete Omnes,

dog days of the summer - but there is war, crime and mayhem, from the crime alleys of Chicago, Baltimore, Washington DC in the US, to the Russian aggression in Ukraine, or the war against Tigray in Ethiopia.  

 


Equestrian art -  joy of painting and aesthetic contentment via the brushworks of Alfred Munnings (1878-1959 ), British equestrian painting and sculpture maestro.


 

Great example of his representative  work - in this gallery,  a lithograph of The Red Prince Mare.
Sir Alfred was in favor of the representational art - here this article about his life, and dislike towards so called modern art - titled The Painter Who Hated Picasso-  Smithsonian via Web Archive. 

Christie's has some of Munnings' art for purchase and along with that auction there is their take on his art and subjects - from War Horses to Royalty. 


thanks to wiki commons galleries I can corral here some of this works

 













Sculptural work - eg the monument to a fallen cavalryman Edward Horner, and the Brown Jack, Irish-bred gelding and famous racehorse.



 

 

Valete