Biography
John Steegman OBE (b. Brentford, Essex, UK 1899 - d. Coffinswell, Devon, UK 1966), the elder son of E. J. Steegman, a naval doctor, and his wife Mabel (née Barnet), was educated at Clifton College and King's College, Cambridge. He was a cadet-officer in 1918 and a reporter for a short time before being appointed in 1925 as a lecturer and guide at the National Portrait Gallery, London; he was an assistant keeper there from 1929 to 1945. He was seconded to the British Council to work in Spain, Portugal, Iceland and Palestine during WW2. He settled in Cardiff after his appointment as Keeper of the department of art at the National Museum of Wales in 1945. He left in 1952 to become head of the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal, Canada, where he remained until 1959. He was visiting professor at the University of Chicago in 1950. After his retirement he was in much demand as a lecturer in Europe, the Middle East, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
During his period at the National Museum the department of art became an important centre for the study of the work of Richard Wilson, and he gave encouragement to contemporary art in Wales. Before leaving the Museum he compiled a catalogue of the Gwendoline Davies bequest. He came to Wales as a specialist on British portraiture and his main contribution to the Museum was his survey of portraits in Welsh houses. His Survey of portraits in North Wales houses (1955) was published after he had left Wales; the survey of south Wales was completed by R.L. Charles and published in 1961. He published a number of articles and other books on art, including Hours in the National Portrait Gallery (1928) and The artist and the country house (1949). He himself was a watercolourist, and his only brother Philip was a portrait painter. He was unmarried and returned to live at 9 Sloane Gardens, London, but died in Coffinswell, Devon, on 15 April 1966. He received the OBE in 1952.