Walter Thomas Monnington

Sir Walter Thomas Monnington PRA (2 October 1902 – 7 January 1976) was an English painter, notable for several large murals, his work as a war artist and for his presidency of the Royal Academy.

Monnington was the son of a barrister and although he was born in Westminster, London, he grew up in Sussex before spending time on a farm school at Ross-on-Wye.

[2] Throughout this time he was also working with a group of other artists, including George Clausen and William Rothenstein, on two major decorative schemes, one for the Bank of England and the other, between 1925 and 1927, for St. Stephen's Hall in the Palace of Westminster.

He also, after a chance meeting with Barnes Wallis, contributed design improvements, now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, to a new heavy bomber aircraft then being developed which later became the Avro Lancaster.

[6][5] In November 1943, WAAC issued Monnington with the first of a series of full-time commissions that saw him flying with a training squadron in Yorkshire and with Mitchell bombers to Germany.