λ Edward Seago (British 1910-1974) First on the Tide Oil on canvas Signed (lower left) 39.5 x 49.5cm (15½ x 19¼ in.) Provenance: Purchased from the artist by Bernard and Dorothy Garrington, The White Hart, Great Yeldham, Essex Crawford Dew and bequeathed to the present owner. As Seago's style matured and he searched for his own unique voice, coastal landscape at Low Tide became an increasingly popular motif in his work. It gave him the opportunity to explore the fleeting effects of reflected light as the tide ebbed and flowed and light bounced off the saturated sand and mud. Edward Seago (1910-1974) Edward Seago was one of the most popular English landscape painters of the 20th Century. He was born and lived in Norfolk throughout his life and the influence of the greatest artists of East Anglia, from the 17th Century Dutch-inspired Norwich School, to John Constable and Sir Alfred Munnings can be seen in his work. His light-filled landscapes, many with vast skies and billowing clouds are imbued with what one critic has described as `an understated emotional language'. The ten works included in our sale span the breadth of his long and very successful career and show his evolution as an artist from rural equestrian scenes to his travels further afield across Europe and Hong Kong, which went on to become some of his most celebrated and popular subjects. Seago was largely self-taught and was influenced and mentored by leading landscape painters of the day such as Alfred East and Bertram Priestman who advised him not `to be unduly governed by what you see in art, but by what you see in nature' . His work gained wide popular appeal and his sell out exhibitions had queues around the block on opening day, but generally art critics saw him `merely recording his visual impressions' and struggled to place his work in the context of modernism and the growing interest in abstraction. He never became an Academician at the Royal Academy, but nonetheless he was a firm favourite with three generations of the Royal Family and in 1956 he was invited by Prince Philip to join him on a trip to the Antarctic aboard The Royal Yacht Britannia. Seago was also a prolific writer and published eleven books, including several with poems and prose by the Poet Laurette John Masefield. Seago was equally at home in the company of the aristocracy or country folk and his work enjoys broad popularity to this day with numerous collectors around the world.