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J. Hugh L. Beattie. Portraits; Military & Civil. 
 
From historic landscape to Historic Portrait, New Canvas 
 
Christmas and new year were fairly low key this year but mercifully free of lockdown misery. In the build up to Christmas, Colchester art society had their usual art show, but this time in a pop up former shop in the best spot in Colchester. It was fascinating to know that even in this central location, close to the Saxon church I have painted so often, the foot fall was good but the sales the same as usual, when they are normally located in the central but off the beaten track gallery by the Castle. I am beginning to think that North Essex artists are not cherished by North Essex people? 
 
Thus I have had an idea, I will move on form painting the best historical landscapes Essex has to offer. I have painted people form history often, and with the re-writing of History that is going on in some quarters at the moment, this is a good time to reassess the likenesses of great men of the past. As I don’t want to be accused of ‘cultural appropriation’, I shan’t paint great women or other cultures, but paint noteworthy and notorious men of my own culture. I don’t believe that Heroes should be perfect people, we are all flawed, so the first man I shall study is Lord Palmerston and then perhaps Clive of India. I will paint them in their heyday not old age, with a period background in order to set a scene as iconic of their period as possible. For all their talents and sins, painting great men is done in order to give more insight and a fresh few of them form an amalgam of all available images I can find. One can chose for oneself whether they are gods of devils, but we always find they are neither! Just look at TE Lawrence!  
 
 
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