Painting Calm in a Time of War: Alfred Munnings and the Making of Canadian Memory

Edited By Rui Huang

During a recent visit to Calgary, members of the Hart House Art Committee had the opportunity to visit the Nickle Galleries at the University of Calgary, where Munnings – The War Years was on view. The exhibition brings together a remarkable selection of works by Sir Alfred Munnings, produced during his commission with the Canadian War Memorials Fund in the final year of the First World War. Seen today, these paintings offer more than a historical record. They invite reflection on how war is remembered, aestheticized, and quietly shaped into national memory. 

Renowned primarily as one of England’s finest painters of horses, Munnings occupies a distinctive position within the canon of war art. His work resists the familiar imagery of chaos, violence, and devastation that often defines representations of the Great War. Instead, Munnings – The War Years presents a vision of war marked by calm, routine, and dignity. This exhibition raises an essential question: what kind of war does Munnings show us—and how has this vision influenced the way Canada remembers its First World War experience? 

Alfred Munnings’ path to becoming a war artist was neither direct nor inevitable. From a young age, he was drawn to rural life and, above all, horses—subjects that would define his artistic career. In 1899, a severe accident left him blind in his right eye, permanently altering his depth perception and ending any conventional path into military service. When the war broke out in 1914, Munnings was rejected from enlistment, deemed physically unfit for combat (Munnings 102). 

Yet his desire to contribute persisted. Before receiving his commission, Munnings worked at a Remount Depot in England, caring for horses destined for the front. This proximity to the machinery of war—without direct participation in combat—would shape his artistic vision. When he was eventually commissioned in 1918 to document the Canadian Cavalry Brigade and the Canadian Forestry Corps, Munnings arrived not as a soldier, but as an observer (Munnings 300). His paintings emerge from closeness rather than confrontation, from endurance rather than immediacy. This distance is crucial to understanding the tone and legacy of his war time work. 

Although Munnings is not strictly aligned with French Impressionism, his wartime paintings reflect many of its key sensibilities: loose brushwork, attention to shifting light, and an emphasis on fleeting moments. In works such as A Canadian Trooper and His Horse (Unfinished), the violence of war is displaced by scenes of waiting, preparation, and routine. Even landscapes scarred by conflict are rendered with restraint. 

Alfred Munnings, A Canadian Trooper and His Horse (Unfinished), 1918, oil on canvas. Canadian War Museum, Ottawa. 

Rather than depicting the rupture of war, Munnings presents it as a condition of suspended time. These images do not deny destruction, but they temper it. War becomes survivable, even contemplative. This aesthetic choice is not neutral: it shapes how war is made legible and emotionally accessible to viewers, both then and now. 

At the heart of Munnings’ wartime output are horses—not merely as subjects of beauty, but as mediators of experience. Horses were essential to the Canadian war effort: over 23,500 were deployed to transport artillery, supplies, and cavalry units (“The Horse in the Canadian Army in WWI”). Their life expectancy at the front could be measured in days. Yet in Munnings’ paintings, horses rarely appear as expendable tools. Instead, they carry the emotional weight of war. 

In works such as A Grey Team and Forest of Dreux, horses anchor scenes of labour, care, and fatigue. They stand in for vulnerability without spectacle. The bond between soldier and horse allows Munnings to indirectly express loss, exhaustion, and endurance. Where human suffering is understated, the presence of animals—patient, strained, and indispensable—absorbs the moral burden of war. 

Alfred Munnings, A Grey Team, and Forest of Dreux, 1919, oil on canvas. Canadian War Museum, Ottawa.

This displacement is powerful. Horses become a visual and emotional bridge between nature and industry, between individual soldier and state machinery. Through them, Munnings humanizes war without confronting viewers with its most traumatic realities. 

Munnings’ only major battle painting, Charge of Flowerdew’s Squadron, stands apart from the rest of his wartime oeuvre. Depicting the cavalry charge at Moreuil Wood—one of the last successful cavalry charges in military history; the painting commemorates Lieutenant Gordon Flowerdew’s fatal leadership and subsequent Victoria Cross. 

Alfred Munnings, Charge of Flowerdew’s Squadron, 1918, oil on canvas. Canadian War Museum, Ottawa. 

Significantly, Munnings did not witness this charge firsthand. Painted retrospectively, the work functions less as documentation and more as symbolic tribute. Its rarity within the exhibition reinforces the idea that battle, while central to war mythology, is not Munnings’ primary concern. Instead, drama is carefully rationed, ensuring that it punctuates rather than dominates the narrative. This selectivity contributes to a coherent and dignified national memory—one that honours sacrifice without overwhelming viewers with chaos. 

Munnings – The War Years offers a vision of war that is measured, restrained, and emotionally survivable. Munnings neither exposes nor denies the realities of conflict. Instead, he filters them through calm, dignity, and repetition. Horses, forests, and routines become vessels for memory, allowing war to be remembered without being relived. 

Encountering this exhibition today, one is reminded that art does not simply record history; it shapes how history is felt. In Munnings’ case, war becomes something that can be endured, honoured, and quietly absorbed—leaving behind an image of resilience that continues to define Canada’s remembrance of the First World War. 

---

Mario Zhang is a student curator and Student Projects Co-Chair of the Hart House Art Committee. Studying Management and East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto, his writing explores how visual culture mediates history, identity, and the everyday. 

---

Sources

Munnings, Alfred. An Artist’s Life. Theodore Brun, 1950. 

Royal Montreal Regiment. “The Horse in the Canadian Army in WWI.” Royal Montreal Regiment, royalmontrealregiment.com/the-horse-in-the-canadian-army-in-wwi. Accessed 18 July 2025.