Edward Seago
Beautiful Landscapes & Dramatic Seascapes
“While Seago’s subject matter evolved within a fundamentally traditional genre, his methodology, style and technique contributed to an innovative interpretation of the rural, urban and marine scene.”
James Read – Biographer
Seago was born in Norwich on 31st March 1910, to a family of Coal Merchants. He attended Norwich School, and never received any formal artistic training. He taught himself to paint, although received advice from the acclaimed equestrian painter Alfred Munnings. The boy’s talent was quickly noticed, and he won a prize for drawing at the age of 14 from the Royal Drawing Society.
English artist, Edward Seago mostly painted oils and watercolours, travelling widely during his life starting from the 1930s. As a young artist, Seago was fascinated (like Munnings and Dame Laura Knight) by the Circus and the life of travellers. He joined the circus in his younger years as he was also interested in the stage and ballet but in time his love of pure landscape took priority. Through his travels in the circus, he went on to visit Northern France, Holland, Portugal, Hong Kong, Antarctica and Africa.
HIS WORKS
Edward Seago is one of Britain’s best known and most widely collected twentieth-century artists. The level of worldwide popularity is all the more remarkable when one often reads of Seago being described as a very English painter. True, he was brought up in East Anglia, studied under Sir John Arnesby Brown and embraced many of the values of the Norwich School painters.
Edward Seago is a popular, versatile and talented British painter, inspired by John Sell Cotman, John Constable and Alfred Munnings. James Reid, his biographer, has said that while Seago’s subject matter evolved within a fundamentally traditional genre, his methodology, style and technique contributed to an innovative interpretation of the rural, urban and marine scene.
This innovative interpretation, applied to landscapes around the world, relied on a wonderfully fluid and refreshing use of paint. The work is recognisably spontaneous – a moment captured in oil or watercolour, retaining the essential mood of the occasion whether vibrant or reflective.
Seago was popular as an individual and as an artist. His admirers included the Aga Khan III, who was an avid patron of the artist’s landscape paintings, as well as the British Royal Family. Those who wished to buy one of Seago’s paintings had to queue at his exhibitions, with the exception of the late Queen Mother.
It is known that the Queen Mother bought so many of Seago’s paintings that the artist routinely gave her two a year – for her birthday and at Christmas. Prince Philip also invited Seago on a tour of the Antarctic in 1956, and the artist’s subsequent paintings still hang at Balmoral. Seago travelled to many places around the world and was forced to paint quickly, especially when sailing on boats.
“He was always sketching. He always seemed to have a pencil in his hand and 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 paint but the way he’d done it.”
– HRH The Prince Philip, Duke Of Edinburgh
Recently Acquired
A Fountain in Rome by Edward Seago
MEDIUM: Watercolour
DIMENSIONS: (unframed) 10.6 x 15.0 ins/ 27.0 x 39.0 cm
£15,000
STORY BEHIND THE CANVAS
This beautifully written and presented book focuses on one of England’s greatest traditional landscape painters and a pioneer of British Impressionism, Edward Seago, written by James Russell.
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