LONDON — Earl Haig, who developed his gift for painting as a prisoner of war in World War II, has died at age 91.
Art helped Haig move out of the shadow of his father, Field Marshal Douglas Haig, whose command of British troops in the war of attrition on World War I’s Western Front has been sharply criticized by some — and strongly defended by his son.
Haig died Friday at Borders General Hospital in Melrose, Scotland, his family said. The cause of death was not announced.
Serving as a second lieutenant in the Royal Scots Greys, Haig was captured by Italian troops in North Africa in 1942 and eventually was held at Colditz Castle in Germany. In captivity, he revived a childhood interest in art.
“I was able to shed the burden of living up to my father’s great reputation as a soldier,” he once said. “Suddenly fate had liberated me. I could slink away into the shadows of a prisoner of war camp to cultivate the resource of painting.”
His father died when he was 10 but the field marshal’s reputation weighed heavily on Haig, who titled his autobiography “My Father’s Son.”
At prep school in Edinburgh, young George Alexander Eugene Douglas Haig recalled finding it hard to fit in.
“Between the wars, papa was looked upon as a very significant person. I think as a result I almost had an inferiority complex because I was bad at games and no great shakes academically,” he recalled.
The father commanded troops at the 1916 Battle of the Somme, which cost 420,000 British casualties in four months of stalemate. His determination to take on the German army in the Third Battle of Ypres in 1917 produced more enormous casualties.
Earl Haig, who inherited his title from his father, the first earl, was a staunch defender of his father whenever those tactics were questioned.
“Nobody likes to see his father labeled as a butcher and I think it’s very important for the good of this country to set the record straight,” Haig said in 2006. “I found the criticism really rather difficult and sad as his leadership was paramount to winning the war.”
Haig also spoke out against the government’s decision in 2006 to pardon all 306 soldiers shot for cowardice or desertion in World War I.
“It was a terribly sad situation and some of these soldiers were genuinely shell-shocked,” he said.
“But many were rogues, persistent deserters and criminals, or they were guilty of cowardice. They had to be made an example of. I know my father took enormous trouble to consider the merits of each case before authorizing any execution. It wasn’t a decision he took lightly,” he said.
Haig retired from the army in 1951, freeing him to study art intensively.
One of his earliest patrons was Queen Mother Elizabeth, who bought a landscape at Haig’s first exhibition. Queen Elizabeth II appointed Haig to the Royal Fine Art Commission in 1958.
Haig married Adrienne Therese Morley in 1956; they had a son and two daughters before divorcing in 1981.
He then married Donna Geroloma Lopez y Royo di Taurisano, whom he met while painting in Venice. She survives along with his three children.
A family funeral was planned for July 21 at Mertoun Kirk.
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