Two pictures painted by Sir Alfred Munnings in the early 1900s before he became famous are set to fetch around half a million pounds when they are auctioned in America later this month.

East Anglian Daily Times: Munnings' The Plough In Early SpringMunnings' The Plough In Early Spring (Image: Archant)

Munnings’ 1901 oil painting The Plough In Early Spring is expected to sell for between $400,000-$600,000 (£325,000-£484,000) at the auction at Sotheby’s in New York on November 22, while his 1905 watercolour The Horse Fair is likely to fetch between $125,000-$175,000 dollars (£100,000-£140,000).

Both pictures have been put up for sale by a Connecticut collector and are among 11 Munnings paintings set to fetch between £2million-£3million at the auction.

In the Sotheby’s auction catalogue Lorian Peralta-Ramos, a leading authority on Munnings’s life and work, says of The Plough In Early Spring: “Munnings’s childhood was spent at Mendham on the verdant fields of the Waveney valley farmed by his father. This early connection to the land and its people left a lasting impression and in the early 1900s Munnings sought out the area’s local residents as subjects for his painting.”

Sir Alfred Munnings, son of Little Horkesley-born miller, John Munnings, was born at Mill House, Mendham, on October 8, 1878, and was educated at Redenhall Grammar School and Framlingham College.

When he left Framlingham College at the age of 14, he became an apprentice poster artist with Norwich lithographers Page Brothers, and would attend the Norwich School of Art for two hours each evening.

In 1919 he bought Castle House, in Dedham, which he described as “the house of my dreams” and which now houses the Munnings Collection.

He lived and worked at Dedham for the next forty years, until his death on July 17,1959.