In this self-portrait Earl Haig stands, brush and palette in hand, with the Eildon Hills in the Scottish Borders behind him. Dawyck Haig, as he was known to his friends and family, grew up at his family home, Bemersyde, near Melrose. His father, Field Marshal Douglas Haig, was commander of the British Army on the Western Front during the First World War. Dawyck Haig began painting when he was a prisoner of war during the Second World War. He studied at Camberwell School of Art in London from 1945 to 1947 and is best known for his landscape paintings of Venice and the Scottish Borders. Finding ‘consolation in his paints’ during his time as a prisoner of war, he later campaigned for art therapy to be part of prison reform.