Florence CARTER-WOOD

Miss Florence Edith CARTER-WOOD
'Blote', Mrs Alfred MUNNINGS
1888
1914

Originally from Cumberland, the artist first came to Newlyn from her London home to visit her brother, Joey CARTER- WOOD, a talented student at the FORBES SCHOOL. Harold KNIGHT painted her - Portrait of Florence - during her visits (1909-1911), and many others were to follow. She decided that she too would take up landscape painting and attend the Forbes School.

In the Newlyn-Lamorna circle she met Alfred James MUNNINGS, marrying him on 19 January 1912 in Westminster. He painted her frequently, four times on horseback. Seemingly unhappy in their marriage from the beginning, despite their shared love of painting and equestrian activities, Florence died by her own hand of cyanide poisoning on 24 July 1914 at Mrs Jory's Cliff House Hotel (now the Lamorna Cove Hotel), where she and AJ were staying. Her death was the source of Laura KNIGHT's cryptic comment in Oil Paint and Grease Paint, that 'Suddenly the death of a much-loved member of our colony put an end to all joy.' She is buried in Sancreed Graveyard.

works and access

Likenesses of the Artist:Harold Knight, Portrait of Florence (1909-11)

Works include: The Ruined Chapel (1909), Chieca Bay and Water (1914)

exhibitions

Liverpool (Walker Gallery) 1909

London Salon

RA (2) 1914

references

St Ives Times 8 May 1914

I Green [in] Hardie 2009 Artists in Newlyn and West Cornwall p78

Hardie (2009) Artists in Newlyn and West Cornwall

Hoyle, H (March 2013 Women Artists in Cornwall www.cornishmuse.blogspot.com) 'Summer in February - Art in Lamorna 1910-1914'

Johnson & Greutzner [under Mrs E F Munnings & Edith F Carter Wood as two separate people] (1975) Dictionary of British Artists

Knight (1936) Oil Paint and Grease Paint

Tovey, David (2022) Lamorna - An Artistic, Social and Literary History - Volumes I & II, Wilson Books

Wormleighton (1995) A Painter Laureate