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Lot Essay
Seago's first encounter with the Far East was a brief visit to Singapore in 1956, en route to join the Duke of Edinburgh on his World Tour. This invitation was not without clear intent, for the Duke recounts how he 'hoped Ted would find something to challenge his remarkable talent for landscape painting'. Seago accepted this challenge wholeheartedly, choosing to return to the Far East in 1962, this time at the request of his patron, John Kidston Swire.
As Chairman of the parent company of the Far Eastern Trading and Shipping Group, whose Hong Kong manager wanted six pictures for a new boardroom, Swire immediately commissioned Seago, who arrived in Hong Kong shortly thereafter. The company paid Seago's expenses and he refunded them in paintings. While appalled at the poverty that he sometimes encountered, Seago found Hong Kong to be a rich source of inspiration, and the trip generated some of his most atmospheric works.
This picture is therefore both immediately recognisable and strikingly foreign to the experienced Seago enthusiast. We are reassured by Seago's usual spontaneity of composition, yet gone are the familiar pastoral landscapes of Britain, replaced instead with the striking shapes of the Hong Kong harbour, which emerge against a light handling of the hazy sky and cloud.
By the 1960s Aberdeen had become one of the most famous fishing villages in Hong Kong. Seago plays the tourist here, emerging himself in the noise and bustle of the catch. It is no coincidence that shipping scenes should feature so prominently in the work of a painter who had such great fondness for sea voyages. Masts and rigging make fascinating shapes and patterns in these seascape compositions. Seago captures the sounds and figures he would have seen, interpreting the harbour as alive and full of industry.
Seago's unique ability to transpose his skill from British landscapes, to Honfleur (see lot 97), Venice (see lots 103 and 104), Ponza (lot 102) and further afield, while maintaining their close relation in style and form is due to a clear sensitivity in the understanding of atmosphere which he achieved with such regularity, regardless of location. (Francis W. Hawcroft, Edward Seago, London, 1965) His sympathetic appreciation of what he saw accounts for Reid's accolade: Seago was one of the few British painters to have so successfully 'essayed the challenging task of the Orient' (see J. Reid, Edward Seago The Landscape Art, London, 1991, p. 230).
For another view of the harbour at Aberdeen, Hong Kong, in watercolour see lot 99.
As Chairman of the parent company of the Far Eastern Trading and Shipping Group, whose Hong Kong manager wanted six pictures for a new boardroom, Swire immediately commissioned Seago, who arrived in Hong Kong shortly thereafter. The company paid Seago's expenses and he refunded them in paintings. While appalled at the poverty that he sometimes encountered, Seago found Hong Kong to be a rich source of inspiration, and the trip generated some of his most atmospheric works.
This picture is therefore both immediately recognisable and strikingly foreign to the experienced Seago enthusiast. We are reassured by Seago's usual spontaneity of composition, yet gone are the familiar pastoral landscapes of Britain, replaced instead with the striking shapes of the Hong Kong harbour, which emerge against a light handling of the hazy sky and cloud.
By the 1960s Aberdeen had become one of the most famous fishing villages in Hong Kong. Seago plays the tourist here, emerging himself in the noise and bustle of the catch. It is no coincidence that shipping scenes should feature so prominently in the work of a painter who had such great fondness for sea voyages. Masts and rigging make fascinating shapes and patterns in these seascape compositions. Seago captures the sounds and figures he would have seen, interpreting the harbour as alive and full of industry.
Seago's unique ability to transpose his skill from British landscapes, to Honfleur (see lot 97), Venice (see lots 103 and 104), Ponza (lot 102) and further afield, while maintaining their close relation in style and form is due to a clear sensitivity in the understanding of atmosphere which he achieved with such regularity, regardless of location. (Francis W. Hawcroft, Edward Seago, London, 1965) His sympathetic appreciation of what he saw accounts for Reid's accolade: Seago was one of the few British painters to have so successfully 'essayed the challenging task of the Orient' (see J. Reid, Edward Seago The Landscape Art, London, 1991, p. 230).
For another view of the harbour at Aberdeen, Hong Kong, in watercolour see lot 99.