Horse & Hound

‘It’s marvellous Mr Munnings!’

“THESE riding women imagine they look entirely different to what they are,” wrote the equestrian artist Sir Alfred Munnings to his second wife Violet McBride in 1921.

It was a seemingly arduous commission to paint the Duchess of Westminster at her country house Eaton Hall that prompted the outburst, revealed in a published collection of letters from 100 years ago, entitled Yours with Love, AJ.

“Very sick of this job... Thank heavens the D [Duchess] is going off tomorrow. She is anxious over the picture – first she want the mane blowing & then laid down – & she

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