Born in Mendham, Suffolk on 8th October 1878; died in Dedham, Essex on 17th July 1959. English Impressionistic painter and occasional sculptor. Alfred Munnings was the son of an East Anglian mill owner. He began his career as an apprentice lithographer in Norwich before rising through the ranks of the Royal Academy to become its President in 1944. At the age of 20, he was blinded in his right eye, however he was undeterred, painting paint ponies, rural life, travelling communities and idyllic landscapes. His paintings capture the British countryside before widespread industrialisation and urbanisation. His paintings made in France at the end of the First World War depict the close relationship between man and horse, such as the Canadian Cavalry Brigade watering their horses or the Canadian Forestry Corps hard at work in the huge forests of war-torn France.