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.)