In March 1913 two horse painters met at the Lyceum Club to discuss the establishment of a Society of Animal Painters to raise the profile of their genre. Of the two, it was Alfred Munnings whose profile needed raising. Lucy Kemp-Welch had been a celebrity since her twenties when her 5x10ft canvas ‘Colt Hunting in the New Forest’ caused a sensation at the 1897 RA Summer Exhibition and was purchased by the Chantrey Bequest for the new National Gallery of British Art on Millbank.
She threw herself into every activity she depicted, whether rounding up colts or hauling timber
The daughter of a Bournemouth solicitor, Kemp-Welch had been riding and sketching horses since the age of five and had developed a photographic memory for catching them in action. Her first Academy submission, ‘Gypsy Horse Drovers’ (1894), painted while still a student at Hubert von Herkomer’s Art School in Bushey, was inspired by the sight of gypsies driving horses through the village to Barnet Fair; rushing out after them, she had dashed off an oil sketch on the wooden slide of her paintbox.
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