Earl Haig | POW and painter, 91

Earl Haig, 91, who developed his gift for painting as a prisoner of war in World War II, died last Friday.

He died at Borders General Hospital in Melrose, Scotland, his family said. The cause of death was not announced.

Art helped him 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 was sharply criticized by some - and strongly defended by his son.

Serving as a second lieutenant in the Royal Scots Greys, George Alexander Eugene Douglas Haig, who inherited his title of earl from his father, 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.

Field Marshal Haig died when his son was 10, but the officer's reputation weighed heavily on the son, who titled his autobiography My Father's Son. His 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 huge casualties.

Earl Haig was a staunch defender of his father whenever those tactics were questioned. He retired from the army in 1951, freeing him to study art intensively (see some of his work via http://go.philly.com/haig). One of his earliest patrons was Queen Mother Elizabeth, who bought a landscape at Earl Haig's first exhibition.
- AP