Edward Seago: Painting with the Prince

"Portrait of the Duke of Edinburgh" by Edward Seago

"For Prince Philip the journey on the Britannia involved a full programme of official commitments but he obviously regarded painting as an integral part of relaxation. He and Seago often worked together, either at separate easels or combining their efforts to produce a lino-cut for a 'Red Nose' certificate to be given to each member of the ship's company to commemorate their visit inside the Antarctic Circle. 'Prince Philip has really done the design for it although the wardroom asked me,' read the entry in Seago's diary, 'but I must admit his idea is better than what I had in mind! I am amazed at his keenness and energy.' This was written on the day when both men had experimented on an improvised roller to print three hundred sheets from the lino-block. 'The first pulls were not awfully encouraging,' Seago wrote, 'but Prince Philip was full of determination.' When the technical problems were resolved, the Prince headed a team of shift workers who volunteered to work the roller.

At one point during the voyage world tour during the voyage, the prince painted a portrait of Seago at his easel on board the Royal Yacht, Seago, in turn, made a portrait of the prince at work with his oil paints. The pair of paintings were shown together in the 2016 exhibition “Portrait of the Artist” at Buckingham Palace. 

One afternoon just before Christmas Seago wrote in his diary that he and the Prince had a joint effort of sea and sky. Some years afterwards recalling the 'joint effort' Prince Philip said he suspected that his own part was to ask Seago where he had gone wrong in his picture and Seago would have come over and put him right. 

Prince Philip spent quite a lot of time on the trip trying to do skies and seas, but not with any great success. He found it always very discouraging to try and learn from Seago because one felt as if one were riding a bicycle on the ground while the painter was riding another on the high wire above. Just watching Seago at work gave him great pleasure, he said, 'because while the results were fantastic, just watching the way he achieved them was even more fantastic.' 

Seago wrote down a list of colours he recommended should be put on the palette and Prince Philip always kept the old envelope with the list on the back in his paintbox although he noted that Seago was far more economical in his colours than he was.  

Seago's capacity for work was tremendous, the Prince recalled: 'He was always sketching. He always seemed to have a pencil in his hand and with just a few lines could reproduce all the atmosphere and feel of a place with just the smallest pencil sketch. He also had this photographic memory and if he'd ever painted anything he could always remember exactly how he'd painted it; not just what he'd painted but the way he'd done it.' 

To be continued

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

Edward Seago: To the Antarctic

"In 1956 Prince Philip invited Edward Seago to join him on part of his world tour on board the royal yacht Britannia for a trip to Antarctica. Such a journey, Prince Philip thought, would give a painter of Seago's talent a tremendous opportunity to work where no other artist had really tried to paint - with the exception of Wilson who did a few pictures on the expeditions with Shackleton and Scott.

"The Whaling Station, Leith Harbor, South Georgia" 
by Edward Seago

Seago met up with the tour in Australia before sailing to Antarctica. On Boxing Day, Britannia encountered her first iceberg, a castellated beauty about two and a half miles long and a hundred feet high. From then on, Seago concentrated on painting the exciting, unfamiliar scenery around him. 'It was tremendously thrilling,' he said afterwards. 'I had always expected something that was very, very flat, and instead of that it was mountainous with tremendous peaks and black rock. I thought there was going to be wide expanses of nothingness and now and again queer upright icebergs and, of course, I thought it would be colourless; a mixture of greys and blacks and whites. Instead of that the colour was tremendous. It was full of rich blues and greens and the cavities glowed with the most rich luminous blues and greens, which were tremendously exciting to paint."

While he painted there, Seago was aware from an artistic point of view that he was in completely unknown territory. 'You see,' he told a radio interviewer, 'we can't help being influenced by pictures we have seen by other painters of the past of various parts of the world and it was rather fascinating to go to a part of the world where you had seen no pictures at all because nobody had ever painted it. It was was particularly fascinating because I live in a part of the world which has been painted over and over again and really is the teething ground of landscape painting.'

Although the sub-zero temperatures made it impossible to use watercolour, Seago found the dry cold no worse than a winter's day in England. He painted about sixty pictures on the expedition and gave them all to Prince Philip who sent most of them to Balmoral and had a particularly fine painting of an iceberg hung in Britannia. The Prince said it was a marvellous gift but if ever the painter wanted any pictures back for reproduction purposes or anything like that, to be sure and ask for them. 'Oh, that's quite unnecessary,' Seago replied. 'If I want them at any time I can easily remember them.'

In support of this he told the story of a painting Seago had given the Wardroom of the ice-breaker John Biscoe, the research ship in which the party travelled to one of the remotest Antarctic bases. The Captain though it was intended as a personal gift for him and when he left the ship he took it away with him, to the annoyance and disappointment of the officers. Seago did not hear about the incident until some ten years afterwards. He then painted the same picture all over again and sent it to the officers of the ship. Telling the story, Prince Philip said if the two pictures were hung side by side, it would have been impossible to tell the difference."

To be continued

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

 

Edward Seago: Thoughts on Modern Art

"Mooring Posts, Grand Canal, Venice" by Edward Seago

"Edward Seago was always willing to be a guest speaker and revelled in the opportunity to express his views on modern art. 'I believe that more than fifty per cent of abstract art is pure balderdash, absolutely phony,' he told Norwich Rotary Club in 1952 when he deplored its exaggerated worship by a gullible public, even while admitting there were many sincere abstract painters to be found.

'This is an age of experiment,' he wrote, 'when talent must be willfully moulded and eyes can no longer see without the brain distorting their vision. It is no long enough, apparently, to approach nature with humility, hoping only that one's personality may stamp the interpretation. Nature must be put in her place, bent to the will of man's inflated sense of intellect. I have read much concerning this superior attitude and I have seen the bewildering products of its cult. 

I admit wholeheartedly that, by their standards, I am old-fashioned; I do not think that I shall receive the sympathy of the intellectual forces in the great art world for I admit that I am offering nothing new by following in a great tradition - except that I am me, and anything that I do cannot have been before. But I work in all sincerity, as I feel and as I see.'

 To be continued

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

Edward Seago: The Capricorn

"August Afternoon, Champs Elysées" by Edward Seago

"Apart from occasional trips to London and the visits to Sandringham, the only time Edward Seago spent any time away from home was to live on his boat. At sea he became more ambitious and exchanged 'Endeavour' for a younger, more seaworthy craft, 'Capricorn,' a thirty-ton auxiliary ketch, which he equipped as his ideal floating studio.

Even her name fired his romantic imagination. It had been chosen because she was registered in the month of December and Seago learnt with satisfaction that those born under the symbol of the goat were headstrong and brave of heart. Further investigation revealed that the symbol should, in fact, be a sea-goat - half goat, half fish. He interpreted it in a pair of frolicsome creatures with long scaly tails which he had cast in brass, covered in gold leaf and fixed to either side of the bow of his boat's blue-green hull. A red pennant held by another golden capricorn streamed from the top of the main mast.  Gold flashed from her symbols, the name on her hull, her lifebelts and from an extravagant thin gold line just above the rubbing rail. 

In his refitted floating studio he crossed the Channel to Dieppe for the first of a series of memorable cruises to Paris. He had never seen the port, but he felt he knew it well from the pictures of Bonington, Fancia and Whistler. Its character had been changed by modern features like lamp posts, telegraph poles and traffic, and he queried whether the older artists would have recognized it. But, for his own part, he often found good painting material in the evidence of modern times. In Dieppe, Seago set up his easel near the port to sketch the ragged skyline of leaning roofs and chimney stacks and old grey-washed houses.

Capricorn cruised up the Seine in the August sunshine and the painter made notes in his sketchbook of the passing scenes. Had he stopped long enough to set up his easel and make more permanent records he knew he would have been faced with the difficulty he invariably encountered in strange places where he saw so much to paint that he did not know where to begin.

'At first, all the more obvious compositions catch the eye,' he wrote in his last book 'With Capricorn to Paris,' after they had passed a chateau he longed to paint. 'If I had painted the chateau it would have been the whole chateau as I had first seen it - pink and grey against the dark trees and the cool, green pattern of the shadow-streaked pasture. Then I expect the light would change and I should want to paint it again. Only after I had worked there several days would my eye become more selective. I should find bits of the chateau - a corner of a terrace and some stone steps; perhaps only one doorway - and then I should leave the chateau and find endless subjects under the trees and along the smooth grass of the river bank where anglers sat by the hour.'" 

To be continued

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

Edward Seago: The Royals

"The Fish Quay, Istanbul" by Edward Seago

"The Royal family, it appeared, were as united in their interest in Edward Seago's work as the critics were in ignoring it. Queen Mary visited one of his exhibitions on the eve of the birth of her great-grandchild to see Seago's portraits of the King and Queen. Soon afterwards Seago was invited to stay at Sandringham House for the first of a series of bi-annual visits in January and July, when the Royal family were in residence. It seems that he established a particular rapport with Queen Mary. In a letter from Sandringham in her flowing handwriting dated 11 January 1950, Queen Mary warmly thanks Mr. Seago for his book, expresses her pleasure in meeting him and in watching him sketching so quickly. Afterwards he sent her his painting of Old Babingley Church. His gift was reciprocated by a book of drawings of Windsor by Paul Sandby which Queen Mary thought he would 'find attractive.' 

As a result of that first visit, Seago also designed the mascot for Princess Elizabeth's and Prince Philip's car - a silver statuette of St. George and the Dragon. Afterwards he usually sent gifts of paintings to Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother) at Christmas and just before her birthday, on the occasion of his summer visits to Sandringham over the next twenty-two years.

The allegations that Seago deliberately sought Royal favour and in so doing dropped some of his old friends were refuted by many Royal letters over the years. For instance, he declined the Queen Mother's suggestion that he might like to spend a few days with her in Caithness to see if he felt like painting her some pictures - she thought it would be so delightful to show him the strange landscape and wonderful skies. Later, he refused Prince Philip's invitations to stay at Balmoral or to join him for two months on the Royal Yacht for a winter cruise to the Far East.

Sandringham, however, was conveniently a part of his familiar Norfolk while the Royal approval of his work was the much-needed antidote to his perpetual insecurity. Phrases like: 'I cannot thank you enough for giving me yet another glorious addition to my Seago collection...' were the encouragement he never tired of receiving and he responded with generosity."

To be continued

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

Edward Seago: The Annual London Exhibition

"After Rain - Upper Horning" by Edward Seago

"Before the opening of Edward Seago's annual London exhibitions, queues of potential purchasers camped in Bond Street from first light so that exclusive neighbouring tradesmen protested at the unprecedented sight. When the Colnaghi Gallery's doors opened at nine o'clock, the scene inside the normally quiet, elegant galleries was an undignified scramble, comparable to the first day of a sales week. Genuine collectors were enraged when they saw the pictures they wanted snatched from under their noses while speculators bought anything on which they could lay their hands. By the end of the first morning it was indeed rare for any picture to be without a red dot indicating its sale.

The annual free-for-all was a growing embarrassment, and eventually the directors of the gallery devised a routine whereby numbered catalogues were issued when the doors opened. One hour later, a member of the firm stood in the centre of the gallery, called out the catalogue numbers in sequence and took an order for one picture only from each holder. Still the queues formed long before opening time and sometimes several members of one family could be recognized there as well as representatives of an agency which had been commissioned to obtain numbered catalogues. The painter who was the cause of all the rivalry would have been far happier to see critics from some of the national newspapers at his exhibitions but, after the early years, almost without exception, they stayed away.

For the newspaper reporters it seemed the annual success story had become repetitive; for the critics the pictures rarely varied in style and content. Edward Seago rated attention only when he was lured away from his beloved landscapes to apply his craftsmanship and personal idiom to the pageants and personalities of the time. At the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten he made three impressions of the Royal procession turning into Parliament Square, paintings in which the scarlet and gold uniforms were startling in their effect in contrast to the sombre day and the dim greyness of the crowds. With such scenes of light and movement the painter's unrivalled gift of a photographic memory, painstakingly trained, came into its own. With landscape he had a total recall for up to seven years."

To be continued

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

Edward Seago: "Endeavor"

"The Bure Near Upton" by Edward Seago

"Back in Norfolk after the war, Edward Seago found a temporary antidote to his restlessness in the shape of an old naval sailing vessel and sported a 'For Sale' notice across her bows. The 'Endeavor' was fifty-two feet long, sturdily built and suitable for cruising on the Broadland rivers and at sea. Seago visualized sailing her up the Norfolk coast to familiar painting spots or going south to explore the Suffolk and Essex estuaries and then cruising up the Thames, lingering in the Pool of London to paint before working his way up the river to Oxford and the Berkshire meadows.

His preoccupation was with tantalizing views from the wheelhouse of subjects he could hardly wait to paint. He visualized himself, during the coming years, mooring his floating studio to every yard of bank along some two hundred miles of local rivers. So he finally embarked on his life-long mission which was to discover and portray the meaning behind the beauties of nature he recognized all round. 

From then on, like Constable, he took nature as his subject and was the constant student. 'My attitude to nature is one of enquiry - an endless search for explanations and discovery,' he noted in pencil on blank pages of his sketchbook. 'I believe that the more searching one does the more one's appreciation grows. Subjects present themselves which had not been apparent before, and fresh lines of thought invite enquiry.' 

It was the first time since his lonely boyhood that he had long periods of quiet to indulge his thoughts uninterrupted by the succession of events that had crowded his life since the day, sixteen years ago, when he had left home to join the circus. The circus and the ballet had tested and proved his technique and broadened his personal perspective; the war had released his capacity to express emotion. At last he had arrived at a point when he could accept that his senses were most stirred by the great expanses of sky and by moving clouds and the shadow of trees reflected in slow-moving water so that he need go no further than the familiar places he had loved in boyhood, where wind and weather and the seasons offered him a new subject every day and a joy which it was his challenge to convey."

To be continued

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

Edward Seago: Ins and Outs of Army Life

"The Tape Line to Forli" by Edward Seago

"Edward Seago had been taken ill with a prolonged heart turn and, as usual [trying to hide his condition from the army], was in the care of a civilian doctor. After he had been absent for a couple of weeks, a conscientious army medical officer decided to pay a courtesy call on Edward, whom he though was suffering from influenza. He was shocked and startled to discover the real nature of his illness. On his report, Seago was summoned before a medical board and told to consider himself out of the army from the moment he left their presence. As far as Seago was concerned it was the ultimate rejection.

The pain and humiliation were clearly apparent in a letter which he wrote to General Harold Alexander, a close friend who had become Commander-in-Chief of the 15th Army Group in Italy. The General's reply was characteristic of his firmness and readiness to turn his power to patrician use. He wrote: 

'My Dear Ted - This will be a grand opportunity for you to come out and pay me a limitless visit. You will stay at my HQ as my guest and I can probably find some work for you to do if you get bored - but bring all your painting materials, and you will be able to paint to your heart's content...' 

Upon arrival in Rome, he was driven to Alexander's advance headquarters, which was a little group of caravans and tents in the middle of a wood. The commander explained, 'I thought you might like to come and paint here. If the army doesn't want you, you might as well paint, and what better place to paint than Italy? You can paint the campaign.' Edward was surprised but gratified, and wrote to a friend, 'I never knew what position I was appointed to. I had a driver, and a jeep and a pass from Alex which enabled me to go anywhere from the 5th Army to the 8th Army and attach myself to any Battalion on either front. I wasn't an official war artist, I was Alex's official artist and I remained a Major!' 

Again he knew an overwhelming desire to paint, but for once he felt quite unable to express his feelings by selecting a focal point and then seeing the whole of the picture in relation to it. '

The battered towers of ruined churches signified so much more than an 'upright' of value to the composition,' he wrote. 'Groups of rain-sodden men and vehicles, deep in mud, ceased to be mere combinations of shape and tone. Shattered houses, spilling their structure in a pile of rubble could not be dismissed as a pattern arrangement of coloured walls, and weary refugees on their journey without purpose could hardly be sketched as 'incidentals' in a landscape."

To be continued

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

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.)