Categories
News

Snow at Dedham

Snow at Dedham this morning looking over towards Munnings’ Studio 9/2/21.

“The floods were a great adventure while they lasted. How sure was I that I could paint all this sky and water! What pictures I set out to do ! Alas ! when I tried, the wide stretches of flood would look like snow.

Skating at Flatford.
A Winter Scene at Castle House with Birds Feeding.

There are yet the frosts and snow to tell of, which were often the cause of floods and which lasted for weeks and weeks together. Lanes drifted up level, and there were snow-ploughs with horses and men who were given hot, mulled beer to drink. Then a thaw, followed by floods and more frosts and hosts of folk all skating. Some skating and pushing others on chairs; some cutting figures on the ice; skating all hours of the day and in the moonlight. Sharp, hard, sparkling frosts, and a church cold in spite of stoves on a Sunday.

A Winter Landscape with Trees.
Winter Morning.
 
In the mornings, our towels, like Mr. Jorrocks’s, were frozen stiff, and the water in the ewer was a block of ice. As we lay in bed we heard the bang of cracking ice on the river, and hated getting up and going to school.”
 
Sir Alfred Munnings, An Artist’s Life 1950.