LUCAS, Sydney Charles Seymour

1878 - 1954

Sydney Charles Seymour Lucas was born at 21 Queen Square, Holborn, London on 11 May 1878 and baptised at St John the Evangelist, Westminster on 1 June 1878, son of John Seymour Lucas and his wife Marie Elizabeth Seymour Lucas, daughter of Louis Dieudonné Cornelissen (1819-1889), of Paris and London who married at St Giles, London in 1877. Lucas was educated, as a boarder with James George Easton, vicar of St Margaret's Church, Ilkeshall St Margaret, Suffolk in 1891, and at Westminster School 1892-1895 and the Royal Academy Schools. In 1901, a 22-year-old art student, living at 1 Woodchurch Road, Hampstead, with his parents, 51-year-old John Seymour, Royal Academician, and 49-year-old Marie, and two siblings, Marie and Edgar Donald William Seymour Lucas (1891-1901). Sydney married at St Pancras, London in 1905, Mary Douglas Clark and in 1911, a 32-year-old artist, living at 61 Rudolph Road, Bushey, Hertfordshire with his 25-year-old wife Mary, born in Scotland and son, Arthur Henry, born at Bushey on 30 May 1908. It was about this time that the family added Seymour into their surname. Sydney was a portrait painter & illustrator, he exhibited at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters; the Royal Academy and the Royal Scottish Academy 1909-1940, from Bushey, Hertfordshire in 1909, London 1934 and Blythburgh, Suffolk 1936. His wife died at University College Hospital, Gower Street, London on 11 April 1933, aged 48, and in the same year he married secondly at Battersea, London,Marian Seymour Lucas, née Woods, when they moved to the family home at ‘The Priory’, Blythburgh and where his sister Marie, Mrs Marie Ellen Grubbe was living. In 1939, he was living at Westwood Lodge, Blythburgh with his wife Marian. He exhibited at the Ipswich Art Club in 1941 two works, 'The Old Rick Yard, Blythburgh' and 'Greenwich Reach', in 1942 'Springtime in East Anglia' and 'The Old Cider Press, Colyford', in 1943 an oil 'Dawn on the Farm' and in 1944 two oils 'The late Guy Bancroft, Esq.' and 'The Duveen Gallery, Millbank'. Sydney Charles Seymour Lucas was of Cleveland Cottage, Blythburgh, Suffolk when he died at The Priory, Blythburgh on 11 June 1954, aged 78. The Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich holds some of his paintings including an oil 'Suffolk Puches-Mares and Foals' which was loaned to the centenary exhibition of Ipswich Art Club in 1974. In 1941, on his opening of the 64th Ipswich Art Club exhibition, his scathing attack on modern art provoked some of the most heated correspondence ever to appear in the local 'East Anglian Daily Times'.

Royal Academy Exhibits
from Blythburgh Lodge, Halesworth, Suffolk
1936 176 Lt Col Sir Edward Barry, Bt., D.L.
831 Feeding Time
1937 455 Mrs Ernest Crofts, widow of the late Ernest Crofts, Esq. R.A.
1938 161 Meditation: Miss Estelle Scadden
930 Suffolk Punches, Blythburgh Marshes
1939 391 The Black Crinoline: Mrs Seymour Lucas
1940 309 Enchantment: My niece, Margaret Julia
         379 HRH. The late Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll
1943 308 Old Suffolk Barn
1945 935 The Decameron
from Walberswick, Southwold, Suffolk
1946 297 Arthur Welford, Esq., F.R.I.B.A. of Bromswell
1947 640 Edgar Ramsden, Esq.
1951 222 H. M. Cleminson, Esq.

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Works by This Artist