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Lot Essay
James Boswell, commissioned the present portrait of his daughter from Munnings in 1901, whilst the artist was lodging with the Boswell family in Norwich. Munnings was paid 1, for what was the artist's first portrait commission.
James and Sam Boswell's shop in Norwich sold antiques and paintings by Norwich school artists and they became regular buyers of Munnings' paintings. 'Theirs was a happy, business relationship. Munnings made Boswells' elegant, double-fronted shop in London Street his Norwich headquarters and painted in a corner of the top room ... There he produced picture after picture from his imagination; illustrations of scenes and characters he had read or plays he had seen, which the Boswell brothers bought, before they were dry, for a few gold sovereigns' (see J. Goodman, What a Go! The Life of Alfred Munnings, London, 1988, pp.53-54).
James and Sam Boswell's shop in Norwich sold antiques and paintings by Norwich school artists and they became regular buyers of Munnings' paintings. 'Theirs was a happy, business relationship. Munnings made Boswells' elegant, double-fronted shop in London Street his Norwich headquarters and painted in a corner of the top room ... There he produced picture after picture from his imagination; illustrations of scenes and characters he had read or plays he had seen, which the Boswell brothers bought, before they were dry, for a few gold sovereigns' (see J. Goodman, What a Go! The Life of Alfred Munnings, London, 1988, pp.53-54).