Edward Seago: Expressing His Gift

"Cattle on the Marsh, Ludham" by Edward Seago

"Gradually, for Edward Seago life in the country fell into a more relaxed pattern, just as the doctor had hoped. 'Suddenly, everything was at hand,' he wrote. 'All the things I so wanted to draw were within a stone's throw of the house; a farmyard with its wealth of subjects - the binder and the ploughs, the wagon shed, the stack yard, the cow-house and the stables.' He was intoxicated in his new-found happiness and probably still unaware that it was the stable where Alfred Munnings had loved to paint.

The only flaw in his happiness concerned the gift of a talent that had become his very reason for living. He noticed that although his mother never failed to encourage him to paint, neither she nor his father commented - favourably or otherwise - on his finished pictures. Always he waited in perplexed disappointment for the criticism or approval that never came.

But not for a moment was his irresistible urge to paint diminished. His persistence demonstrated courage, a great strength of character and the overriding determination to follow what he had long recognized as a profound calling. The clarity with which he saw his purpose is underlined by a boyhood essay in which he visualized himself as an old, white-bearded gentleman, sitting in an armchair looking through the window at a country scene. He called it 'When I Am Old.' 

'I shall,' he wrote, 'perhaps, have painted such a scene, for God gave me this way of expressing Nature and I have done my best to be worthy of that gift. I have taken from her that which I love best. I have chosen simple landscape and, of landscape, I have also chosen that which I love best. If I have failed in my purpose, I am sorry, and I may not do better were I to try again. But all I ask is that my work shall not be forgotten. I shall be forgotten and I would wish to be. But my work stays behind me...' The essay was, eventually, included in an unpublished set of illuminated manuscripts entitled 'Sketches from Nature - Written for my Mother - July 1926.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from Edward Seago: The Other Side of the Canvas" by Jean Goodman.)  

 

Edward Seago: Clouds

"A Windy Day" by Edward Seago

"By the first summer at Brooke Lodge, Edward Seago's heart turns occurred at least once a fortnight and only on warm days was he allowed to leave his bed and lie on the long wicker chair which his mother arranged under the elm tree. There, however, he was far from idle. In his book, Sir Alfred East had advised that a student should paint a sky every morning at the same time, and date the sketches with the hour and the direction and the strength of the wind, so that at the end of a few weeks he would have learned more of the sky than he could have by reading the latest scientific books.

Edward did better than that. Lying flat on his back, the sky was the one thing he could really see, and he painted it day in and day out, on small wooden panels. Often he painted as many as six panels in one day and on the back of each, just as East had prescribed, he noted the weather and atmospheric conditions so that by the end of a day he had a complete weather picture from morning to sunset. Years afterwards he learned that over a century before another East Anglian painter, John Constable, had at the age of thirty on the advice of Ipswich painter George Frost, annotated his sketches in a similar way.

Gradually, the boy found that to observe and paint what he saw was not enough to make his clouds 'float with the luminosity of that wondrous ocean overhead.' He studied books on cloud formations and combinations and, like the scientist-painter Leonardo da Vinci, he learned that clouds were composed of minute particles of water or ice and that the answer to their colours lay in the refraction of light by atmosphere. 'Then the real fun began,' he recalled. 'Each day taught me more and each day I saw something of reality in what I had been reading.' Slowly, frustration at the enforced physical restriction gave way to a positive enjoyment of life."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Edward Seago: The Other Side of the Canvas" by Jean Goodman.) 

Edward Seago: Brooke Lodge

"Study of HRH Queen Elizabeth II on horseback,
at her birthday parade in 1953" by Edward Seago

"At thirteen years old, the experience of working with a fine painter and absorbing his ideas was a tremendously exciting experience, and by that time the boy had an understanding companion with whom to share his new horizons. She was his governess, Miss Dora Daniels, who lived nearby and who over the years became his devoted support and a staunch friend to his mother on whom she was a calming influence.

Miss Daniels was small, neat and unfailingly cheerful. She was Edward's ageless ally on all the adventures he could cope with and on fine days, when he was well enough, she would shoulder his easel, take their lunch and they would tramp miles out into the country for a day's painting. There were days when he was too ill to see her, but afterwards, when he lay resting in bed she would take turns with his mother in reading to him, often from the book by Sir Alfred East of which he never tired, and also poetry including the works of Byron and Shelley and, time and again, the poems of John Masefield. She told him, 'No doubt, before you have finished, kings will be sending for you and, one day, one of them will say, 'Arise, Sir Edward, Knight of the Paint Brush!'

The doctor suggested that Edward's health might benefit from living permanently in the country. His father, a countryman at heart, was delighted with the idea and raised the money for the country house of his dreams. Brooke Lodge was a handsome, red-brick Elizabethan-style house about six miles from Norwich. Previously it had been the home of the great Jack Cooke, the legendary Master of the Norwich Staghounds of which Alfred Munnings was an enthusiastic member when he lived five miles away at Church Farm, Swainsthorpe. 

Munnings was a friend of Cooke's and had often visited Brooke Lodge and painted the horses in the sweet, warm atmosphere of the stables. So for Edward the new home represented an intangible link with the famous painter. Even if Edward did not know that Munnings had painted at Brooke, he too would find his vision sharpened by 'bright winter sunlight on clipped horses and scarlet coats; bare trees; stacks, on farmhouse gables, the riding out after a slight frost, the riding home with a frost beginning and a young moon in the sky; puddles already crisping over...'" 

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Edward Seago: The Other Side of the Canvas" by Jean Goodman.)  

Edward Seago: Bertram Priestman, Teacher

by Edward Seago

Edward Seago's parents thought his writing a letter and sending it to such a noteworthy artist as Bertram Priestman was inexcusably audacious. Even though Mr. Priestman had written back and invited Edward to come and visit, they felt he must apologize for bothering the artist, and they would go with him to make sure he did.

"However, Mr. Priestman had five children of his own, two of whom were about the same age as the tall, pale-faced youngster standing proud and strangely aloof as he made his token apology. Priestman might well have recalled that he himself could only have been a couple of years older than him when, contrary to his parents' wishes, he had left his school to become a full-time art student. 'Well,' he said to the boy, 'Why don't you show me some of your work?'

Before they left, Edward's mother had agreed that Bertram Priestman should make himself entirely responsible for Edward's drawing and painting tuition. She had also seen the beginning of a life-long friendship. He provided Edward with the young companionship of the Priestman family and their friends at Windy Haugh, his thatched house a mile from the sea, with glorious views of the water or marshes from every window. It was a house that was often full of students for Priestman held summer art classes to help with the family finances.

Edward never joined the classes but usually turned up unannounced carrying a batch of new paintings which he and Priestman would discuss in the wooden studio built on to the side of the house. The boy was shown how to look at his subjects, to select and compose and prepare his paints and canvases. Always he was encouraged to paint quickly.

All his life Seago admired Priestman. He wrote to a friend that, at first, when he was a boy, he considered his teacher's work was masterly but that eventually, he modified this impression and came to see Priestman as 'a sound and sincere painter whose pictures were like the man - gentle, sincere and completely honest.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Edward Seago: The Other Side of the Canvas" by Jean Goodman.)  

Edward Seago: The Lure of Art

"A Moonlit Landscape" by Alfred East

As a boy, Edward Seago had been introduced to Alfred East's "Landscape Painting," which influenced him for the rest of his life. "It was the philosophy of the painter that first caught his imagination. At last it brought reassurance to a youngster, cut off from normal activities and, perhaps, sensing potential loneliness. East wrote: 'Nature is for you, as it is for all men . . . Do not grovel before her - be a man whose attitude should be respectful, but at the same time confident. Do not go to your work as a task, but as a labour of love.' Edward eagerly set out to follow the instructions to the letter.

He drew a tree every day for a month until, lie a student of human anatomy, he knew what its limbs would do in a given set of circumstances so that he could than alter the tree's form to suit the composition of a picture without losing even one of its characteristics. The technical advice on composition, colour and form was all there but again and again it was the expression of the overall motive that excited him. 

After six months of imbibing the philosophy and practicing techniques as laid down by a master who had died a decade before, Edward wanted a professional opinion o f his efforts. His opportunity came in June 1923. The timing was perfect - as it could be over and over again - or perhaps it represented the start of a lifetime's habit of recognizing every opportunity to further the cause of his art and seizing it with no thought of compromise. 

On 27 June the morning newspapers announced that Bertram Priestman had been elected one of the youngest Royal Academicians of the time. He was fifty-five, his chief work was landscape painting and East Anglia was his favourite hunting ground. Edward read that Priestman had recently made his home at Walberswick, which meant that a mere thirty miles away was first-class professional help which never for a moment did he doubt was his for the asking. He decided to approach this great painter by writing him a letter and asking if he might visit him.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Edward Seago: The Other Side of the Canvas" by Jean Goodman.)  

Edward Seago: Early Years

"The Rise" by Edward Seago

"Edward Brian Seago's story begins in the grey stucco, three-story house where he was born on 31 March 1910, in Norwich, England. He was named Edward after the Norfolk-loving king who died that year and Brian after his father. 

Both he and his older brother were given dancing and music lessons, and attended school from the age of three. Edward also went to children's art classes because, whenever his mother took out her paintbox he insisted on being allowed to join in and, standing beside her, would daub away with his brushes, completely happy. His lessons, however, proved more costly than expected because the teacher raised his fees every term on the grounds that he worked harder and learned faster than any other pupil. 

At a young age, he began to have heart problems. The doctors were baffled by their sudden onset and alarming severity when the boy lay, nearly unconscious and in great discomfort while his respiration dropped to five breaths a minute and the sound of his heart beating at twice its normal rate could be heard outside his bedroom door. The only treatment they suggested was complete sedation until the attack ceased as abruptly and unpredictably as it had started. Then, after a few day's rest, the patient became impatient to resume the life of an apparently normal schoolboy. Famous physicians were consulted but to no avail.

The patient's interest in painting was a godsend. After an attack, as soon as he was strong enough to be propped up on pillows, he busied himself with his paints and brushes and made watercolors of skies and birds, completely absorbed while the hours slipped away. He wanted no better companion than his mother. She shared his interest in painting and her approval of his work was the only accolade he needed. 

By the time he was ten, Edward had decided that he could never be anything but a painter. When, at the age of twelve, quite fortuitously, he came upon his first 'real artist' holding a large palette on his arm and working at a canvas, he had no hesitation in bombarding him with questions.  Ernest Chance did more than just explain his technique. The Christmas after that first meeting he lent his young friend a copy "Landscape Painting" by Sir Alfred East. In it, written simply in student's language, were the guidelines for a receptive young boy eager to learn. Edward absorbed them avidly and, like an imprint at the moment of birth, they were with him for the rest of his life."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Edward Seago: The Other Side of the Canvas" by Jean Goodman.)  

Edward Seago: Prelude to a Portrait

"The Piazzetta, Venice" by Edward Seago

"It was a bleak winter's day, with the east wind whipping in over the marshes from the North Sea, when I sat for my portrait in a small Tudor house in the heart of Norfolk. I left my car in the narrow lane near a small iron gate and went in. As it clanged behind me there was a sense of entering a private world of enchantment. Edward Seago's secretary, a young man with a puckish face and laughing eyes, let me in to the small square hall where a conglomeration of personal treasures jostled for attention. There stood a sculpture of a bronze horse and winged rider, the model for the wartime insignia of the Airborne Forces, an Orpen self-portrait, some Augustus John drawings and, through the open doorway into the drawing room, a glimpse of an ancient clavichord, elegant silk curtains and velvet and damask-covered chairs. 

Inside Seago's studio a giant Parliament clock on the wall ticked solemnly and the crackling of a log fire mingled with the soft wail of the wind. There were well-worn armchairs, rug-covered settees, shelves of books and souvenirs of working holidays spent abroad. It was a homely place. I found myself enthroned on the sheeted armchair on a raised dais in the centre of his studio. He ignored me and busied himself mixing the paints. It seemed as if he would never stop. I studied him, a tall lean man in his early forties. He had long, beautiful hands but on the middle finger of the left hand an ornate gold ring which seemed as out of place as his bow tie. Coolly his eyes met mine, appraising and enquiring, but without emotion. I sensed that already he knew all he needed to know about me, and with an occasional look, was transferring it to canvas. In less than three hours it was caught forever, as large as life.

'It's like,' he said, even before I had been invited to see the portrait, and I detected the relief and satisfaction in his voice. So he too had been apprehensive about the result! It was 'like.' As I studied the mirror-image of a slightly windswept girl in a faded red shirt, my hand automatically went up to straighten my hair. 'I shall paint a picture,' he had said, 'not just a likeness.' But how had he sensed that, given different opportunities, I could have been the outdoor type?

Over the years I acquired other Seago paintings: ships and scenes of faraway places, oils and watercolours and little pen-and-ink sketches. But always, the portrait held pride of place in the sitting room; or it did until recently. Last year it was supplanted and moved over to make way for one of his last canvases. It is a picture of a place where we once walked together, a near-secret place at the bottom of his garden where a little wood gives way to a dyke leading to a secluded stretch of water where he kept the blue-hulled boat that bore him on painting trips, across the seas. To study it was, for me, to know I should write about him again. But this time it would be a portrait in depth of the painter I had once studied from the other side of a canvas." 

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Edward Seago: The Other Side of the Canvas" by Jean Goodman.)