Munro was born in Mid Calder, Midlothian and educated at George Heriot’s School, Edinburgh and at the Royal Scottish Academy Life School. In 1925 he won the Chalmers-Jervis Bursary Prize and Carnegie Travelling Scholarship, which took him to Paris to study with Andre Lhote.
In the 1920s and 1930s he travelled extensively in Europe (Italy, Holland, Norway, Denmark and Finland) and North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia and Algiers). Returned to Edinburgh in 1929 and married Ruth Morwood 1932 with whom he later made a home in North Africa above Tetuan.
He became art master at Loretto School, Edinburgh and later at Trinity College, Glenalmond. His only one man exhibition was in Edinburgh in 1984. With the exception of one or two scenes in Finland and the Highlands, almost all his 49 exhibits at the RSA were of North African and Spanish people and scenery.
He did not show at the RSA after 1952, restricting his work to the RSW, of which he was elected a member in 1956, and Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts
