Edward Seago: Alfred Munnings

"Thorn Marsh with Cattle and Trees" by Edward Seago

"Nineteen-year-old Edward Seago had been introduced to Alfred Munnings, who, from his early painting days, had been a name to conjure with, an artist and horseman whose hard-riding life-style was legendary. Soon he was regularly driving to the painter's studio in Dedham for input. The influence of the jovial, big-hearted man, who generously dispensed practical advice to the young painter, must have been overwhelming. Its effect, consciously or subconsciously, for a time became apparent in Seago's work.

'See, he's even put in Mr. Munnings' buttercups,' was a scathing comment Edward's mother overheard about one of his paintings at an exhibition. 'Since when has Alfred Munnings had the monopoly of buttercups?' was her sharp reply. Edward, when he heard of the incident, was very concerned and mentioned it to Munnings on his next visit. 'Don't listen to such damn nonsense,' was the reaction. 'If I can't drum some of my ideas into that foolish head of yours, what on earth's the good of your coming here?' It was benevolent advice, but the donor would be sorely tried when before long, the recipient was painting portraits of some of Munnings' distinguished sitters and charging a considerably lower price.

With growing independence, Edward often joined half a dozen or so of the young 'horsey set' at the Beaufort Hotel for a pint or two of beer on Saturday evenings before moving on to the Old Café Royal for a snack and then to a Norwich dance hall where there was no shortage of girls waiting to partner the young county 'bloods,' unmistakable in their tweed sports jackets. Then in May 1930, he had the satisfaction of having a picture hung in the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition. It was a small oil called 'Over the Sticks' showing a country point-to-point meeting. Bertram Priestman was unimpressed, as was a critic of the 'Eastern Daily Press. 'It is not what I should call a good example,' he wrote Edward. 'However, I hope you will have something good ready for next year.' 

One Saturday evening Edward and a friend visited a travelling circus. It was not the first circus that Edward had seen, but suddenly the colour and movement under the strange luminosity of the Big Top, caught his painter's eye - and prepared the way for a new and unexpected adventure."

To be continued

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

Edward Seago: One-Man Exhibit in London

"Herringbone and Other Mares in a Paddock"
by Edward Seago

"Edward Seago's patroness Lady Evelyn Jones suggested that he should have a one-man exhibition in London for which she and another would underwrite any expense. However, Edward's father insisted that the financial responsibility was his. The Arlington Gallery in Old Bond Street was chosen, and on 25 November 1929, Sir Hereward Wake performed the official opening before a distinguished gathering mustered by Lady Evelyn, for which the press turned out in force.

They saw fifty-seven paintings, priced from £4 to £150 and ranging in subject from landscape to horse paintings and equestrian portraits. Twenty-three pictures were sold on the first day, representing takings of £184 18s., which was enough to send Edward's father rushing back to their home in a fever of excitement to collect more pictures and to encourage his son, when he returned from London after the first few days of the exhibition, to produce others to replace the diminishing stock.

But the painter, exhausted by the strain of a London debut, retired to bed suffering from pains in the head and contented himself with sending a couple of scribbled cartoons to his brother, one portraying himself in his studio painting with one hand and with the other passing a finished canvas through the door to his father's outstretched hand. The second cartoon showed him in bed languishing against the pillows with a bandage round his head. It was captioned, 'He that holdeth exhibitions in London, is not only in danger of hellfire, but of Neuralgia!'

As far as the critics were concerned they commented on the nineteen-year-old's 'extraordinary promise and natural instinct as a painter' while, almost unanimously, they decried his drawing ability. He himself confessed 'Of course I must learn to draw. I have colour and technique, but my horses are all wrong. Any critic would pull them to pieces,' and 'my education has been terribly neglected.' The critic from 'The Morning Post' recognized 'most encouraging signs of future development' and, added, 'as yet he is influenced by the art of the elder men, for instance, of Mr. A.J. Munnings and Mr. Wilson Steer. He could not seek advice from better painters.'

Edward never hesitated to act where any possible benefit to his work was concerned, and it seemed but a logical step for him to approach Munnings. In the small world of East Anglian horselovers, an introduction to the popular painter presented no problem and a portrait on loan to Seago's exhibition from Richard Bullard represented the key. Bullard often entertained Mr. and Mrs. Munnings at his home at Stoke Holy Cross, and it was most probably he who arranged the introduction."

To be continued

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

Edward Seago: First Patron

"The Norfolk Point-to-Point" by Edward Seago

"It was in the guise of a new neighbour, Edward Seago at last came face to face with his first important patron. She was Lady Evelyn Jones, daughter of the 4th Earl Grey, a former Governor-General of South Africa and Canada. She was artistic and a great activist who loved people and could never resist helping the underdogs and encouraging them to achieve their potential. Edward could not have know as much, but the instinct which five years before had motivated him to write to Bertram Priestman, once again asserted itself and, with an unswerving singleness of purpose, he cycled over to Stoke Hall.

Again his instinct had been right. Lady Evelyn herself opened the door to the pale, good-looking youth with a stack of pictures under his arm. 'I'm a painter,' he said. 'I live near here and I'm trying to find someone who'll help me to earn a living because my parents refuse to give me any encouragement.' The unconventional intrusion convinced Lady Evelyn that here indeed was a painter and one worth helping. She would introduce him to people with fine horses who might well like to have their portraits painted.

She wrote to her aunts, the Countess of Antrim and the Countess of Minto, both Ladies in Waiting to Queen Mary, and also thought of local friends to whom she would introduce him. Archibald Jamieson, the City financier and Chairman of diverse companies was one. The philanthropist lived nearby and had a wife with a keen artistic sense who had studied at the Slade with Professor Tonks. He was an ideal patron. They took an immediate liking to the young painter whose pictures they considered reflected a great appreciation of living. It was a perceptive judgment of the work of a boy who had learned to live and paint with the knowledge that he might be existing on borrowed time and that each day might prove to be his last.

After a time, Edward persuaded his father to let him take over two unused loose boxes at the back of the house and, with the money he had saved from selling his paintings, converted them into a large studio with a north-facing window overlooking the farmyard. It was the stable where, less than a decade before, Munnings had loved to paint. It was completed shortly before his nineteenth birthday, and his Priestman wrote to him: 'You may be sure, I would not give my time to trying to give you any little help I do, if I did not believe in you. If not now, one day, your people will be proud of your work.' Then he reminded his pupil of God's words to Joshua: '...only be strong and of good courage.'"

To be continued

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

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.)