Edward Seago (1910 – 1974)

Edward Seago was born in Norwich on March 31st 1910. He was always interested in art as a career and started painting as a child. His childhood was interspersed with spells of illness due to heart weakness which necessitated a mainly private education.

In 1924 the family moved to Brooke and he received some instruction in landscape painting from Bertram Priestman, R.A. He held his first one-man show in London at the age of 19 and continued to exhibit there regularly as well as in other cities including New York, Bristol, Glasgow, Toronto, Montreal, Oslo, Bergen, Los Angeles and Brussels.

Between 1930 and 1932 he joined a travelling circus and painted scenes and characters from the circus life, a year later publishing his first book `Circus Company'. During the war he served with the Royal Engineers and designed the insignia and Colours for the Airborne forces. He also accompanied Field Marshall Alexander during the Italian campaign.

Besides being  a most gifted artist, Edward Seago was a very talented writer and published a number of books amongst which are `Caravan',  `High Endeavour', `With the Allies Armies  in Italy', `A Canvas to Cover', `Tideline' and `With Capricorn to Paris'. He was a member of the Royal Society of British Artists, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Watercolourists and a Fellow of the International Institute of Arts and Letters.

Extract from the writing of Edward Seago

`To my mind there are few places to equal the bleak stretches of the East Anglian coast. Perhaps one has to be born and bred there for it to really get in one's blood. But, it has a powerful hold on me, and wherever I go, I feel a longing to return there'.