Quite a ride

I FOUND a new lad, a primitive Cornish youth. Ned was the name of this simple soul, who grew into a useful combination of groom-model, and posed for many a picture.’ One of Sir Alfred Munnings’s most famous and evocative paintings—The Grey Horse, Ned Osborne on Grey Tick, with a buzzing fair at Zennor in the background—has rarely been seen in public, but is now on display at the Munnings Art Museum in the Dedham Vale on the Essex/Suffolk border, on loan from a private collection until November 1.

Munnings painted Osborne astride the grey mare many times—‘Good, patient Grey Tick! I have often thought of her since, and how she helped my account at the bank’— when he was living in Cornwall in