Edward Seago valuation
Painted Norfolk skies, Venice and the Antarctic fast and wet, and was collected by the Royal Family.
Edward Seago was born in Norwich in 1910, was largely self-taught, and spent much of his childhood in bed with a heart condition, drawing.
What a work by Edward Seago is worth
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Bio
Edward Seago was born in Norwich in 1910, was largely self-taught, and spent much of his childhood in bed with a heart condition, drawing. He travelled with a circus in his twenties, served in the Royal Engineers, and became one of the most commercially successful British painters of the mid-century without ever much interesting the critics. The subjects are the Norfolk marshes and skies, the Thames, Venice, the Norwegian coast and, following an invitation to join the Duke of Edinburgh on Britannia in 1956, Antarctica. His annual London exhibitions sold out on the opening morning. He died in 1974.
Oils on board and canvas are the main market, alongside a large body of watercolours, and both were produced in quantity. Because the work sold so well and so publicly, provenance is often domestic and unrecorded and the pictures have frequently been reframed, so the reverse of the board carries whatever labels survive and should not be disturbed. Subject matters commercially: Norfolk, Venice and the Antarctic pictures are distinct. Signature is a plain Edward Seago, usually lower left. Copies and imitations exist in some number.
At a glance
- Born
- 31 March 1910, Norwich
- Died
- 19 January 1974, London
- Movement
- Post-Impressionism
More on Wikipedia.
The Queen Mother, the Antarctic and the will
Seago's exhibitions drew queues of buyers; the Queen Mother bought so many that he took to giving her two pictures a year. In 1956 Prince Philip invited him on a voyage to the Antarctic aboard the royal yacht Britannia, and the paintings he made on it hang at Balmoral. During the war he worked on camouflage with the Royal Engineers.
He died in London in January 1974 and asked in his will that a third of the paintings then in his Norwich studio be destroyed. About 19,000 watercolours and 300 oils are thought to survive, so the subject, date and condition of an individual picture matter more than the name alone.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
