EDWARD SEAGO, ROYAL PAINTER: a Diamond Jubilee celebration
Edward Seago’s work has delighted four generations of the Royal Family: Queen Mary; King George VI and Queen Elizabeth; Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh; and HRH the Prince of Wales. Norwich-born, Seago lived much of his life in East Anglia while packing in many other adventures, including a spell as a young man travelling with a circus and an ‘interesting War’ sketching the Italian Campaign of 1945 as the guest of General Alexander. After the Second World War, Seago bought the seventeenth century Dutch House at Ludham on the Norfolk Broads. He increasingly focussed on painting the gently-rolling landscape of vast skies, huge cornfields studded with noble oaks, high-piled summer clouds reflected in the meandering waterways of the Broads, and brutal winters of mist and frosted stubble. He shared his love of the Norfolk landscape with the Royal Family, for whom Sandringham, near King’s Lynn, had been a cherished retreat since the days of Edward VII. Early in his career Edward Seago concentrated on portrait and equestrian subjects. His first royal connection was with the future King George VI’s sister Princess Mary, Countess of Harewood. In 1931 he was invited to Egerton House, the Harewoods’ Newmarket stud, to paint the Earl’s Ascot winner Alcester; this was followed by a portrait of the Princess out riding. A man of sensitivity and charm, Seago mixed easily with widely varied members of high society. In the 1930s he enjoyed a close friendship with the family of Henry Mond, 2nd Lord Melchett, the son of the founder of ICI. During the War he formed a bond with several high-ranking Army officers, including General Harold Alexander and General Auchinleck, both of them keen amateur painters. It was at Alexander’s headquarters in the wooded hills above Siena that Seago first met George VI, who was on a secret, moraleboosting visit to the Italian Campaign. Seago, possessed of a photographic memory, subsequently made a vivid sketch of the King which he gave to one of Alexander’s aides-de-camp.