Edward Seago: The Play of Light

"The East Window" by Edward Seago

"A letter from an old friend had arrived inviting Edward Seago to hold a one-man show at the Castle Museum in Norwich. It seemed only a short time ago that his mother had taken him there to admire the work of Munnings and Crome, Constable and Cotman. He would make sure that, despite wartime difficulties, it would be the most comprehensive display of his work that could be assembled, and he advertised in 'The Times' for an assistant to help him prepare it. The successful applicant was nineteen-year-old Vernon Russell Smith, recently invalided out of the RAF and waiting to go up to Oxford to study architecture. On Seago's instructions he assembled oils and water-colours, portraits and landscapes, ballet and circus scenes, and wartime studies.  

As the exhibition approached, Edward had a heart turn and for twenty-four hours the terrifying sound of his pounding heart and his laboured breathing could be heard all over his tiny cottage. Vernon was completely unprepared for the frightening sight and at times had real doubts as to whether the exhibition would be anything but a posthumous one. When the attack was over Seago lay propped up in bed, while the late afternoon sunlight traced shadows of the small square panes of glass on the flimsy curtains. He was fascinated by the play of light, and his finger itched for a paint brush. 

When he was up and about again, he was haunted by the memory of the sunlight flushing the bedroom curtains to a warm pink, and he toyed with the idea of making a picture, but could think of no context in which to use the effect of the light playing on the curtains. Then, one afternoon, he noticed his assistant Vernon shaving at the kitchen sink, with the light from the kitchen window falling across his face. He saw his picture. At four o'clock in the afternoon he persuaded Vernon to change into pajamas and transfer his shaving operation to the upstairs bedroom. By the end of the day, he had completed what he considered to be one of the best pictures he ever painted.

The small oil of a young man shaving in front of a bedroom window was listed No. 1 in the exhibition and afterwards Seago gave it to the City of Norwich to commemorate the exhibition. It was called 'The East Window,' implying that morning was normally the time for shaving. A keen observer, however, might detect a soft mellow quality about the sunlight, more evocative of afternoon than morning and a visit to the cottage would prove that not one of the tiny windows there faced the east."

To be continued

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

Edward Seago: Happy Is the Artist

"Early Morning" by Edward Seago

In the foreward to his book, "Peace in War," Edward Seago wrote: "The seasons of the year still pass, but now they are regarded as factors in the tactics of war. I try not to see them so. They hold other meanings for me, and I watch them pass with a sadness I have seldom felt before. My time is filled with Army duties, and the landscape has become a background for military activity. No longer can I lie on the springy downland grass and hear the crickets chirp, or pass long hours by the wood fires of the gypsies. Sometimes I have passed their painted wagons on the road. From the Army car I have caught a glimpse of a dark-eyed child, pulling at the bridle rein. For the next few miles I've travelled on my memories.

Brief spells of leave come like milestones on this wartime road. For a few days one can try to take the old life out of pawn. I imagine whatever that old life was, it will have frayed with wear, but that which won a man's endearment I feel may still be found...

I think most people will allow that the mentality of an artist is unsuited to the Army, but there are thousands equally disinclined to leave their civilian life. Actually, I think the artist is in many ways more fortunate. He has a more keenly developed perception of beauty, which gives him consolation in surroundings where others find none. This inward happiness is a continual source of joy which cannot be taken away, but with it there is the pain of being deprived of the means to express it; the longing to put paint on canvas which has to be suppressed.

I believe that a painter does not lose by this. His perception may even become stronger, so that when he returns to his work in life, his feelings will assert themselves with greater definition. There have been so many painters whose finest work has been achieved in times of great trial; who, beset with difficulties, have somehow overcome them. And I believe that almost every artist in the Services today is finding, during his leave and leisure moments, the opportunity to express himself in the medium he loves best." 

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Peace in War" by Edward Seago.)  

Edward Seago: Peace in War

"The Rain Cloud" by Edward Seago

"'Author Henry Williamson saw Edward Seago (on leave from the army) on the uplands of his farm, huddled on a stool, wrapped in a rug against the east wind, painting for hour after hour. Williamson met him going home in the twilight, lamenting in his quiet voice that the sky tints changed so rapidly and each so marvellously that he could hardly bring himself to leave them. Williamson invited Seago to join him for a cup of tea in the old smallholder's barn where he wrote his books. There they smoked their pipes before the open fire, surrounded by books, farm paraphernalia and hanging bunches of dried tobacco leaves, and discussed the better England they both believed would emerge from the war.

Edward told the older man about his next book which he saw as a combination of pictures and essays describing how each illustration came to be painted. It was to be called 'Peace in War,' 'a record,' Williamson recalled, 'of his escapes into the world of colour and form and line. Which is not to say that the good artist cannot be the good soldier.' In the book Seago expressed his feelings about the English countryside:

'There is a strange grandeur . . . and a strange subtlety of constant change, which has inspired some of the greatest English landscapes. Each mood has a beauty of its own, whether in repose, or raked by a sharp east wind. In the happy painting ground of Cotman, Crome and Constable, I am making no more than a modest attempt to follow in the traditions of the English school, which they endowed with such brilliance and harmony . . . I have only a simple perception, but the country is full of simple things of real beauty, and many of them pass unnoticed by those more out of touch with a simple life.' 

Edward Seago had travelled a long way to discover that philosophy, and it took a war for him to recognize it so that at first only in rare moments did he express it through painting. 

One illustration, 'The Rain Cloud,' that represented a small but perfect example of Seago's complete awareness of a moment of visual ecstasy, was bought by John Hill for twelve and a half guineas. He saw it on a visit to Edward's cottage and took it back unframed in a large Government envelope to his room at the War Office. For him it proved a prophetic purchase for, after the war, quite unexpectedly, he bought an old water mill to convert into a home and afterwards discovered he was living not two miles from the scene in the picture."

To be continued

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

Edward Seago: A Generation Risen

"A Generation Risen,' was the third book in which twenty-four of Edward Seago's pictures were matched to poems by John Masefield. Masefield had been hard put to find time to write all the poems needed because he had committed himself to do war work. 'The composition may take longer than I supposed,' he wrote. The book was the title of the tribute in pictures and poetry to the anonymous heroes of war, and was the only instance of Seago's collaboration with Masefield in which the illustrations were rated higher than the poems.

'Seago has gone to the source for his material while Masefield has gone to Seago,' wrote the critics of the 'New York Times,' unfairly discounting the older man's experience of an earlier war. Undoubtedly there was a new strength of draughtsmanship and a stark realism in the lightning pencil drawings of groups of young soldiers and airmen preparing for battle, planes wheeling into the sky, lorries lumbering along rain-lashed roads; the relentless war march, halted for a series of brief moments by a painter who was acutely aware, because he was part of it all, and had trained and exercised his talent in the make-believe worlds of the circus and the ballet until he was completely equipped to portray the dramas of real life.

Seago did great work in the war because he was seeing it from the inside and not as an official artist. Anonymous, though the people were in the drawings many can be identified, 'The Reconnaissance Pilot' in the book was his closest friend Bernard Clegg, and Peter Hurndall, the man who taught him to fly, had sat for the 'Portrait Study of a Pilot.' One drawing in the book, 'The Bronze Soldier,' was a personal tribute to sculptor and friend Charles Jagger who had died in 1934 and whose greatest work resulted from the First World War. Seago's picture showed a group of soldiers standing in front of Jagger's colossal bronze memorial at Paddington Station, perhaps his friend's own most impressive memorial.

To be continued

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

Edward Seago: Wartime Camouflage

"Southern Highway (South County Highway)"
by Edward Seago

"When war was declared Edward Seago wished to get involved. He applied to become a camoufleur in Air Raid Precaution, volunteered for the air force and pestered his influential friends to write to even more influential people on his behalf. In late November the longed-for call-up notice arrived and he was told to report as a Camouflage Officer to the Headquarters of the School of Military Engineers at Chatham in four days' time. His relief was mixed with deep gratitude as he cleaned his paint brushes, stacked his canvases carefully away and closed up his studio. Who knew when he would use it again? Deep inside his soldier's valise went the inevitable paint-box. He could not have seen it as a key to friendships and wartime adventures beyond his wildest dreams.

He had no time to think of painting during the first weeks of army life. After a brief course on camouflage, he went to France as a Second Lieutenant with the British Expeditionary Force, then was posted back to England with the rank of Major in the newly-formed Camouflage Corps at Farnham Castle, and eventually was appointed Camouflage Officer, 5th Corps, Southern Command.

His approach to the problem of camouflage was refreshingly new. He made no attempt to paint out buildings and identifiable objects individually so that, from the air, it appeared that they did not exist, but he set out to make them converge with their background or look like completely different objects. For instance a battleship could be painted so that, from the air, it looked like a string of barges. 

He wrote a thesis on dummy shadows advocating that they should not, as in the past, be applied as flat, dark green or brown areas, but with the addition of half-tones and dark tones to reproduce the luminosity of real shadows and provide a complete camouflage even in sunlight, against both the human eye and the camera. He advocated camouflaging a large area, like an aerodrome, with groups of painted trees and four or more sets of dummy shadows to each group so that some shadows were in the right direction at any time of day.

Moreover, alongside the technique of the artist he brought the imagination of the showman to the business of camouflage as when he requisitioned a London film studio to produce hundreds of life-size models of Neville Chamberlain wearing battle-dress and a tin hat.  Every model had a rifle fixed at a different angle and was mounted on an individual turntable and used to man dummy anti-aircraft sites, strategically placed around the south coast to deter the invaders. They were remotely controlled so that they rotated and changed positions to give a most realistic effect when photographed from the air. Nothing delighted Seago's humour more than to think of the model Neville Chamberlains he had created defending the country."

To be continued

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

Edward Seago: From Ballet to Equestrian Paintings

"Le Carnaval" from 'Tribute to Ballet' by Edward Seago

"At the end of the summer of 1938, the Ballet Company was booked to dance in New York, and it was suggested to Edward Seago that he should go there, too, and show his ballet pictures. An exhibition of his work was arranged at the Carroll Carstairs Gallery in New York to coincide with both the ballet's opening and the publication of Seago's 'Tribute to Ballet.' 

Hardly a newspaper failed to notice the exhibition, but the serious art critics largely dismissed it as 'Not very deep stuff' and 'A lot of cleverness but very little design or substance in his work.'  With not one picture sold, he and his friend went with Mimi Cushing, a New York socialite, to stay at the attractive stone house of horse-loving Mrs. Mary Stevens Baird. His hostess recalled the name 'Seago' from a reproduction on a Christmas card of a painting showing two of her riding friends. This resulted in an introduction to a friend who had been painted on horseback by Munnings, and she offered Edward a fee of a thousand dollars to do a companion portrait of her husband. It proved the first of a series of similar commissions from hunt country people eager to be portrayed on their favourite horses.

So although most of the exhibition pictures remained unsold, these commissions proved to be the start of a steady stream of requests for equestrian portraits. It reached a crescendo when Edward made a chance remark to a reporter from a newspaper syndicate that was blown up into a story which made full-page spreads: 

"Ballet Dancers are Same Animals as Race-Horses, says Noted Artist'  

'A fine dancer and a great horse are, literally, the same in their bodies and in their temperament,' the painter explained. 'A dancer's feet and legs must develop the same terrific suppleness that a horse's delicate little legs have. If you watch slow motion pictures of a horse taking a jump and a dancer leaping into the air, you realized that the movement of the two bodies is identical...' 'The better a dancer is, the more nearly his feet grow to resemble an animal rather than a human foot. Nijinsky's feet were so far developed in this way that X-rays of his strange bone formation were recorded by the medical profession.'

Most reports  included a neat little pen-portrait of the painter who had expounded the entertaining theory, and one commented, 'Mr. Seago's only two hobbies in life; sitting on a fence watching horses and sitting in the gallery watching the ballet.'"

To be continued

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

Edward Seago: The World of Dance

Edward Seago painting Alicia Markova

"Through his excursions into print, royalties from reproductions of his paintings, portraits and illustrations for magazines and books, Edward Seago hoped to be able to manage without the commissions for equestrian paintings and was heard to vow that he would never paint another horse. At this point he turned more to Degas than to any of the painters to which the critics had compared him. He went to the ballet and discussed it with John Masefield in terms of poems and pictures as a possible subject for a book Masefield, a staunch balletomane, was enthusiastic.

Ballet offered all the colour, light, movement and world of make-believe as had the circus world. Off-stage it provided an antidote to loneliness in the opportunity of belonging to an unconventional élite - a substitute family to which it was by no means as difficult to gain admittance as it had been to his less sophisticated but closer-knit family of the circus. 

He rented a room in London and nearly every night went to the ballet at Sadler's Wells and Covent Garden. He saw the performances from the front of the house, well to the right, which afforded him a three-quarter view of the theatre taking in part of the wings and orchestra as well as the stage and giving the fullest dimension to the light and movement he longed to portray. During the day he watched rehearsals from the wings and sketched at the regular morning classes attended by even the leading dancers. Within a few weeks many of the principal dancers were his friends. Once again, through painting, Edward found himself in a new and exciting world. 

He painted for most of the day. His studio, over a pastry shop, had a large window with a balcony and a view of an old wall covered with wisteria in full bloom and a distant glimpse of the sea. In the evening he was at the theatre to see the ballet,  and afterwards joined some of the dancers for supper. Once again his talent had precipitated him into an intoxicating social life which, nevertheless, was not necessarily conducive to paint and he was increasingly dissatisfied about his work.

Even so, in 1938, 'Tribute to Ballet' made its impact and was recognized by the public and the critics as a handsome recognition by two arts of a third one, rather than as an example of poetry and paintings. At the same time it represented the beginning and the end of Edward's short-lived ballet period. He had watched and painted the worlds of make-believe for long enough and was at last persuaded to concentrate his talent on portraying life's realities."

To be continued

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

Edward Seago: The Country Scene

"The Crest of the Hill" by Edward Seago

"Sons of Sawdust" was Edward Seago's next book, a fictionalized account of his travels with the circus in Ireland intermingled with stories 'Pop' Baker had told him. Among the congratulatory letters was one from the Poet Laureate, John Masefield, which ended with an imaginative suggestion that changed Edward's life. Masefield wrote: 

'I have been enjoying your Irish book and feel (from the illustrations) that you have an extraordinary feeling for landscape. Why not give up a year to wonderful English country life, shepherding on the downs, horse-training at Newmarket, ploughing in Sussex and in Berkshire, hopping in Kent and in the West, a horse-fair and cattle market, a harvest home and a fruit picking with views of some of our valleys, White Horse, the Golden Valley, the Wye, the Severn and the Avon?' 

Almost by chance, it seemed, Masefield had hit on a way to channel Edward's abilities in a more appropriate direction. Edward wrote back, 'Your suggestion for a year of Country Life appeals to me enormously.' He wondered 'if it might be done in book form? A sort of Parlour table album with all the pictures reproduced in colour, with a note about each one, and a thumb-nail drawing on the opposite page. Both men were so excited about this idea that it became a collaboration with the Poet Laureate writing the text to accompany the pictures.

While working on the book Edward divided his time between his family home at Brooke and Melchet Court and fulfilled a steady flow of commissions, although his work was constantly interrupted by heart turns which confined him to bed for days and often weeks at a time. 'But,' he wrote to Masefield, 

'I've been able to work most of the time although only at home, of course. In December I had a wonderful piece of good fortune. A family of ten Romanian gypsies passed through Norfolk. I have been able to get a meadow for them to camp on, and I think they are the finest models I have had. They are the most marvellous people to look at and have such a grand sense of colour: dressing themselves in the most gaudy hues and yet they never seem to clash. I hope you will pick one of the pictures for the book...'

Masefield and Edward chose 'The Country Scene' for the book's title, which was published a year later and not only marked Edward's permanent break with the circus but brought him international recognition."

To be continued

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

Edward Seago: Henry Melchett and Italy

"Gondolas by the Santa Maria della Salute Venice"
by Edward Seago

"One of Edward Seago's patrons, Henry Melchett, not only commissioned him to paint. At the same time he provided him with material security, treated him like a member of the family and also perceived the need for him to broaden his painting horizons. While he believed in his work, he perceived the weaknesses, particularly an inability to draw, and he was in a more subtle position than either Priestman or Munnings to do something about it.

In Venice that summer the family had rented a villa, Casa Leone, and Melchett confronted Edward with the work of the great Italian masters and watched while he reacted to the wonders of the Titians and the Tintorettos, the Canalettos and the Bellinis and marvelled at the Italian skies over the lagoon and the sheer flamboyance of the Venetian sunset; skies such as Constable and the English school of painters had never attempted, where a painter might indulge in a riot of colour yet still paint well within the bounds of nature. But despite the exuberance around him, Edward was intrigued most by the subtle differences in light and atmosphere and expressed himself in a series of dark, emphatic waterscapes.

Before he left Venice, as Melchett had foreseen, its centuries of history gave him a new perspective and his letters reflected the first signs of real humility:

'Actually, I am trying to paint here,' he wrote. 'No very marked success so far! I have seen some pictures which clearly show me that (1) painting is the greatest of all; (2) I don't possess it!!! and what is more I see no way of attaining it!' 

In the end he completed twelve pictures, nailed them up in a coffin and sent them to England for his next summer's exhibition at the Alpine Gallery. Five of the canvases for this show would be lent and of the rest, among some fine equestrians studies, was a painting of Foxhunter, latest winner of the Ascot Gold Cup; an impressive portrait of Michael Hornby in pink coat and silk hat riding his magnificent horse over the Oxfordshire countryside; and also a poignant study of a middle-aged man in bedraggled ruffles and conical hat and with an anxious, puzzled expression discernible under the grease paint, with the caption: 'Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget,' a fitting epitaph to Edward's own life with the circus people."

To be continued

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

Edward Seago: Writer

"Edward Seago remembered his early attempts at writing and once again felt a desire to express himself in words. At the same time he recalled that John Masefield, the recently-created Poet Laureate, lived near Oxford, and he wrote to say he was a painter and a life-long admirer who happened to be travelling in the neighbourhood with a circus and would like to call. His letter was sympathetically received. Masefield loved young people and in his early years it had been touch and go whether he would become a painter or a writer. He was also fascinated by the circus, and invited Edward to lunch.

His short, formal invitation represented the beginning of a deep friendship based on mutual admiration, that was to develop into a successful professional partnership and last until the poet died. 'What you want to do when you're beginning to write,' Masefield told Edward, 'is to write and write and write and then tear it up 'til you get it right.' Back in Brooke with his family after the circus had disbanded for the winter, the painter did just that. He also worked on the canvases he had started during his travels with the circus that summer. 

The Christmas after his meeting with Masefield, Edward told the Poet Laureate about the circus book he was writing and sent him a painting of the circus. 'I shall love to read it,' Masefield replied. But before Masefield had finished reading it, he was writing to point out its shortcomings.

'The book's best passages are what I can only call word pictures of what you have painted... Circus life is what the world wants from you. So strong a dose of it that all readers will feel that they too have lived with the circus. Do not lose so splendid a chance. Turn to it again... Think what we would give for an account of Shakespeare's rough Globe Theatre as seen by an actor of the time and how eagerly every detail, even the stenches, would be followed.'

Seago tried a second draft - and a third. After one more revision, the book, 'Circus Company' was finally published. It was dedicated to the memory of Tommy Baker, the artist's dear friend whose family had adopted Edward into the circus family. It is not surprising that the book was very well received for what would-be writer could have enlisted a more suitable tutor than a poet laureate? It also proved to be a significant milestone in Seago's career since it heralded a series of important collaborations between poet and painter, and introduced the name of Edward Seago to a new public and gave him an authority it would otherwise have taken years to achieve."

To be continued

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

Edward Seago: Royal Approval

"Huntsman on a Horse" by Edward Seago

"Once again Lady Evelyn Jones was instrumental in tempting Seago away from the circus, the second time through an invitation from Lord Harewood, a former ADC to her father, Lord Grey. Writing from Sandringham, the Earl invited Edward to visit Egerton House and to paint his Ascot winner Alcester. He suggested that after the painter had completed the preliminary sketches, he might like to stay the night.

'We dine in short jacket and black tie at Newmarket as we shall be no party, just Princess Mary and possibly my brother and sister-in-law,' Seago read, as the pendulum of his lifestyle again started its upward swing away from fish-and-chip suppers in a horse-drawn circus wagon.

That evening at Newmarket proved a memorable one for the country as a whole as well as for Edward enjoying his first sample of Royal hospitality. For he did enjoy himself once he had overcome his initial embarrassment during a dinner which lasted two hours and in which he recognized only a few of the dishes. It was the night of the 1931 General Election when the National Government gained a crushing victory with a majority of nearly five hundred. The party at Egerton House sat up until after three o'clock in the morning eating chocolates and listening to the election results coming in over the wireless. 

The following day he joined the Royal party for the Cambridgeshire and drove to the race course through cheering crowds, still demonstrating their election fever. Afterwards at lunch, he sat between Princess Mary and Lord Derby.

Princess Mary and Lord Harewood had also apparently enjoyed Seago's visit, for it was followed by others and resulted in several commissions including a large painting of the Derby and an illustrated calendar for the Jockey Club. From then on, Edward never lacked commissions for equestrian portraits and his 'sitters' included the famous winners Hyperion and Blue Peter. His also painted a portrait of Princess Mary on horseback, as Munnings had done, and Lord Harewood publicly endorsed his opinion of his work when in 1933, at the Sporting Gallery in London, he opened his second one-man exhibition."

To be continued

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

Edward Seago: Lucy Kemp-Welch's Criticism

"The Grand Parade, The Bertram Mills Circus"
by Edward Seago

"That winter Edward Seago finished eight circus pictures and in a letter to his brother said he was 'rather bucked with one' and thought it was the best thing he had done. However if, as seems likely, it was the large canvas he submitted to the Society of Animal Painters when he applied for membership the following year, he was over-optimistic. He was not elected to the Society for reasons explained in a personal letter from the President, Lucy Kemp-Welch, the animal painter. Her hard-hitting home truths carried more than an echo of Munnings' opinion. She wrote:

'Of course, it would be easy for me to make one of the usual excuses by which one gets out of explanations, but I am so sure that one day you will do big things - if you keep your face in the right direction - that I am going to tell you the truth about the large circus picture of yours, which was seen by myself and the Committee...'

'My dear boy, that is not art! It might possibly be an advertisement - but it is vulgar because it tries to say too much and see too much and there is no restraint or reticence, or interest of tone or lighting or mass or any of the things which might make it tolerable and perhaps admirable.'

You have been so carried away by the passing show that you have overlooked what made you feel the impulse to paint it - not the facts, not the commonplaces of clowns and Red Indians, etc. But a fine effect of light on a massive design with all the component parts and little masses lost or half seen in the group mass; everything secondary to some big idea or mass of colour or light - or all three with one thing - perhaps, such as the lady in feathers and such details lost in the mysterious blue haze, which is one of the strongest points in the circus as a painting ground.

Well now I have had my say, and I hope you will take it as it is meant from a painter of long experience, who is very interested in your career.'

Lucy Kemp-Welch, of all painters, recognized the true magic of the circus. For months at a time she had attached herself to Lord John Sanger's Travelling Circus and lived in a motor-drawn caravan and painted. Seago was grateful for her criticism. They kept in touch with one another, but he did not again apply for membership of her Society because rejection of any kind, since his parents' apparent rejection of his talent when he was a boy, was to be avoided at all costs. 

Meanwhile, in the autumn of 1931, his painting was interrupted by an invitation which any ambitious young painter would have envied."

To be continued

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

Edward Seago: Study Recommended

"Landscape near Blythborough, Suffolk" by Edward Seago

"Edward Seago stayed back home for just over two months during which time a long-postponed commission materialized to paint Brigadier-General Sir Hereward and Lady Wake and their four children riding in the grounds of their country seat, Courteenhall. In contrast to painting in a circus tent, his studio was now a Louis XVI drawing-room. When the painting was completed, Edward wrote: 'It is without doubt the best I have ever done. Sir Hereward is particularly keen that it should go to the Academy.'

The Wakes showed him around the countryside, took him to Towcester Races, to the theatre, to luncheon and dinner parties and to tea with Lord and Lady Spencer Churchill at Castle Ashby. He and Lady Wake discussed the price he should ask for his pictures. 'I have now arrived at quite definite ideas,' he wrote. 'While it is a great mistake to make your prices exorbitant, it is just as foolish to make them too small.' At the height of his success when everything at his exhibitions was sold on the opening day, he firmly resisted the suggestion that he could easily charge more and, 'a fair price' was all he ever asked.

That year Edward sent the family portrait and a large circus painting to the Royal Academy exhibit for jurying. Alfred Munnings wrote back that they were 'not good enough for so large a picture. You'll now have to study seriously somewhere because all the hanging committee are sorry about your work not being in and they all see that you have the courage and will work. Your father must let you have a year up in town. Try the Academy Schools and you'll be well seen after there. When you have learned more you'll be a great artist. Don't let this defeat worry you. Both the pictures were beaten by their size and utter lack of knowledge and you were at sea when you tried to paint the children's faces. Now you get started and no more playing about and we shall be seeing you in great places one day. The composition of that picture of the children was good. The circus a tremendous effort but a picture that size has to be better to get hung. Never mind.'

Even so, both paintings ended up being hung. 

Munnings wrote again urging Edward to talk to his father about art lessons and reminded him of the long studentships and years of learning of Velasquez, Rubens and Rembrandt and of the Italian men.

'Why did the Academy start its schools 100 years ago if schools were not needed? Why do grown up men go to night classes and draw from the nude, year in and year out? You have now to begin and learn something and from now until the end of this term you ought to go in to Norwich School and work there. Be yourself and do what you want to do. If the master there is 'up to date' as they call it, regard him as you think fit, but go and do some real study and shake the dust of utter ignorance off your feet. Let your father understand that he has to make a student of you for a while and not a young potboiler.' 

But the pull of the circus was too great, and in the end, Edward disregarded the advice. One term's evening classes at Norwich School of Art, studying drawing and working from a series of male models, convinced him that he was equipped with all the schooling he needed and immediately once term was over he rejoined the circus."

To be continued

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

 

Edward Seago: The Circus

Sketches of the Circus by Edward Seago

"An outing to see the circus had ended with Edward Seago being so artistically inspired, that he had received permission from the owner to follow and paint it. In this he was also following in the footsteps of Alfred Munnings and also of Laura Knight. Surprisingly, his decision raised no opposition from his parents. His father had a new-found confidence in him and agreed to give him a small allowance to be repaid from the sale of pictures. His mother, eager to be involved in the venture, offered to do any washing he sent home and promised to supplement Edward's supply of food. 

However, the circus folk did not like mixing with outsiders and made no attempt to conceal their mistrust of the pale, well-spoken youth who hung around their tents and caravans. They showed no interest in his work. 'How I hated those early weeks of my circus life,' he remembered, 'hated almost everything in the circus, and still more the wretched lodgings which gave me shelter for the night.' In town after town, where the circus people ;itched their tents, he wandered about a new ground exchanging nods with unapproachable familiar faces, watched the work that went on behind the scenes and made endless sketches of circus horses which he posed by tethering to stakes in the ground. Only when a drumroll heralded it was time for the next performance did the magic under the Big Top once again confirm that, somehow, one day he would become a part of it all.

Gradually the circus folk's initial distrust gave way to genuine interest when they recognized that the intruder was a man who knew his job. One morning he was working on the painting of a mare when performer Tommy Baker invited him back to the family wagon for a meal after the show. There 'Pop' Baker, with an innate 'gift of the gab,' told takes of the hardship and struggles in Ireland with his small family circus in a trail of wagons with the name 'Baker' gilded on the sides. That night Edward wrote the tales down, to the delight of the storyteller, who although he knew the shortest route to every market town in Great Britain and Ireland, had never had a day's schooling in his life. Similarly, his sons' early success in the circus ring had been at the expense of their education. This meant that Edward had at last found companions of his own age with whom, scholastically, he was at no disadvantage, so that with them he felt neither strange nor inhibited as he often did with his contemporaries.

After he painted a picture of one of the Bakers' mounts and then from imagination, added a lady rider, he was invited to move in with the family. From then on the painter was treated as one of the Bakers by everyone in the circus. He tried to capture the magic on canvas in paintings of circus encampments, portraits of the knife-throwers; Carl Hess, the German horse trainer in the ring with his white Arab; dwarfs and clowns and acrobats, trapeze artists and Adolphe, the animal tamer. He sketched them on small panels to translate onto big canvases which, he told his parents, he thought might be suitable for the Academy. 

At the end of August his parents suggested it was time for him to come home and paint subjects other than the circus. 'I have no wish to drop painting my other stuff,' he assured them, 'but I think the two can go very well together. I can paint hunting, sporting and horse pictures during the winter, and when I come home I shall have September, October and a little bit of November to paint landscapes.' Then he described four more 'outstanding' circus subject he badly wanted to paint.

However a tragic accident made it easy for him to get away. He was working on a sketch of the German animal trainer, Adolphe Cosmeyer, when suddenly, one of the bears turned on Adolphe and killed him before Edward's eyes. In a letter to his parents, all he could say was 'It was too terrible to write about. I almost feel that I would like to come home straight away.' When Tommy Baker drove him to the station on the first stage of his journey home, he promised that he would be back with the circus before very long, and stayed away for two months."

To be continued

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

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.)  

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.)

Joseph Pennell: Final Resting Place

Joseph Pennell Etching the 
Washington Episcopal Cathedral [directly on the plate], 1923

"On Monday, April 26, 1926, Joseph Pennell made his last journey to Philadelphia over the familiar route - with him friends, who appreciated him as man and artist both, and were more than willing to pay him their last tribute as his pallbearers: Robert Underwood Johnson, his first editor and Secretary of the Academy of Arts and Letters; Burton J. Hendrick, Secretary of the Institute of Arts and Letters; William Henry Fox, Director of the Brooklyn Museum; J.B. Bishop, Secretary of the Panama Commission; Gari Melchers, President of the New Society; Gifford Beal, President of the Art Students' League; Edward Larocque Tinker, author whose friendship and work he prized; Edward Robins, my brother. 

Friends waited at the old familiar Quaker Meetinghouse in Germantown. The students from the League came in a body. Philadelphia societies and clubs were represented. The services in the small austere room were more impressive in their simplicity, more solemn than any elaborate rites held in a great Romanesque or Gothic church. In that tranquil place where Friends had given testimony for long years, even those who were not Friends, seemed compelled by some power within to speak what they knew of Joseph Pennell, champion of truth, one who fought a brave fight for the freedom of art and artists.

He was buried close to his mother and to Aunt Martha who had been dear to him, in the cemetery which is just outside the Meetinghouse. It was a pale blue April day, the feeling of spring in the air, the grass fresh in its first green, a suggestion of blossoms here and there, one touch of brilliant colour in the bank of flowers by the open grave, they, no less than the spoken words, bearing their testimony that a few understood the artist who never sacrificed eternal truth to the popularity that passes.

And so I left him, in that Friends' Graveyard at Germantown where two of his family and more than one of his schoolmates were already at rest, only their names and dates on the little gravestones. I remembered his written words: 'And I want to lie there too.'" 

(Excerpts from "The Life and Letters of Joseph Pennell, Volume Two" by  Elizabeth Robins Pennell.) 

Joseph Pennell: A Full Life

"Entrance to Vatican" by Joseph Pennell

"Joseph Pennell was fast reaching his allotted threescore years and ten. To him, however, idleness was a fatiguing occupation and his age, when he remembered it, was a goad to redoubled effort, so much remained to be done in so short a time. Dealers besieged him for prints. Engagements for lectures could not be overlooked. His printing was never better, his watercolors grew in power and beauty. He was as quixotic as of old in his fight for truth, his hatred of shams, and he looked forward eagerly to his labours on the Sesquicentennial Committee for the great glory of the graphic arts. Even I, living with him, working with him day by day, had no warning that the end was near.

And yet, there were signs. With the New Year he began to shorten his hours. Instead of being alarmed, I was pleased that at last he was willing to consider himself and not overtax his strength in finishing today what might be put off till tomorrow. Another sign was his willingness, after a hard day at the press or a long day in the class, to take a taxi home - instead of the subway. The first days of April provided pleasures that were to him a stimulant - old friends over for dinner, looking at prints with his class in the Met Print Room, afternoon teas. 

But on Saturday, April seventeenth, the doctor was telling me 'Your husband is a very sick man,' and within an hour a day nurse was at his side, and a night nurse engaged. A virulent form of influenza had struck which developed into pneumonia. By Wednesday I knew there was no hope, short of a miracle. He knew it himself, though he admitted it to me only once. 'Stay with me as much as you can,' he said, 'This is our last week together.' 

He, who was thought the most impatient of men, was throughout this cruel week patience itself. He did as the doctors bade him, was more concerned for his nurses' comfort than his own, for himself asked nothing, save that his bed might be moved into the front room where he would have before him by day and by night his Unbelievable City, his City Beautiful, New York that he loved. When the doctor decided it was better not, Pennell accepted the decision without a protest, though I realized how bitter was the disappointment. 

He talked little, but I knew his mind was wandering through the past. 'It has been a full life,' he told me after a long silence. 'A beautiful life,' I added 'Yes, a beautiful life,' he repeated. By Friday morning, April twenty-third, his physical strength was fast ebbing, but his mind had lost nothing of its vigour. He asked me to write an overlong delayed answer to a letter from his publisher, told me exactly what he would have me say, listened to my answer, approved, mentioned other letters that should not wait. But before half-past three that afternoon, the end came. He, who had never time to rest, was at rest forever more."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Life and Letters of Joseph Pennell, Volume Two" by Elizabeth Robins Pennell.) 

  

Joseph Pennell: More Than a Teacher

Joseph Pennell Working at a 
Printing Press in 1922

"In the beginning of teaching at the Art Students' League, Joseph Pennell was handicapped by the poorly equipped classroom. He knew that students were no less, or perhaps rather more dependent, than artists upon proper technical equipment. He overhauled the studio properties and added to them. One copper-plate press awaited him at the start. Before his second term, he had seven presses. He had asked his friends in Philadelphia and New York for aid in obtaining the right presses and tools. They knew him, knew this thoroughness as craftsman, knew the unselfishness of his enthusiasm, and they had responded generously.

From the first he foresaw the impossibility of managing alone both etching and lithography classes, of hurrying from the student drawing with a needle on a copper plate to the student drawing with chalk on a lithographic stone. The mediums were too distinct, each called for the master's undivided attention. So he applied to the Mechanics' Ohio Institute in Cincinnati, the one American school visited on his travels where he thought lithography was intelligently taught, and in answer to his request Mr. Charles Locke came to the League, first as his assistant, then taking entire charge of the lithographers. Pennell could not have found a more congenial man to work with. Locke, besides being an accomplished technician, shared his enthusiasms, understood his aims and objectives.

As the school prospered with the passing of the months and years, he was full of fresh schemes to perfect it. It was not sufficient to supply proper tools. They must be used in proper surroundings. He had the two classrooms painted black on floor and high dado, white on the upper walls and ceiling, not solely for decorative effect but for concentration of the light. On the black dado he hung enlarged photographs of Rembrandts and Whistlers. In his rooms the greatest masters of the greatest periods must prevail, theirs the tradition it was the duty of his students to carry on. 

No fine exhibition of prints could open at the Met or the Grolier Club that he did not visit it with his class, talking to them in free and easy fashion of the work, its merit, its shortcomings. 'There were heated debates,' Miss Reinthaler says, 'violent discussions as to how this artist got his effect or how he probably did that, which continued on the street cars and sidewalks.' He brought his students to the rooftop of our hotel that they might share his joy in the beauty of New York, and regaled them with chicken salad and ice cream before they went home. He sought and obtained commissions for them, introduced them to museum directors and to art dealers. He himself bought many of their prints without their knowing who was their patron."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Life and Letters of Joseph Pennell, Volume Two" by Elizabeth Robins Pennell.)