No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VA… Read more

JOSEPH EDWARD SOUTHALL, R.W.S. (1861-1944) Southall was probably the most important member of the so-called Birmingham Group. This close-knit circle of artists represents a late, regional offshoot of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, pursuing its ideals right up to the Second World War. They featured prominently in The Last Romantics exhibition held at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, in 1989, which explored the later phases of the Pre-Raphaelite tradition. The group was profoundly influenced by early contacts with Edward Burne-Jones, who was Birmingham born and took a keen interest in artistic developments in his native city. Their work is also coloured by their close involvement with mural painting, stained glass design, and other aspects of the Arts and Crafts. Southall was born at Nottingham of Quaker parents, but was taken by his mother to Birmingham when his father, a wholesale grocer, died the following year. In 1874 he entered the Friends' School at Bootham, where he was taught painting by Edwin Moore, a brother of the Aesthetic painter Albert Moore and the marine painter Henry Moore. Four years later he joined the Birmingham firm of architects Martin and Chamberlain, but in 1882 he left to concentrate on painting, attending the Birmingham School of Art where he met Arthur Gaskin, henceforth his closest friend, and other future members of the Birmingham Group. At about the same time he settled at 13 Charlotte Road, Edgbaston, which remained his home for the rest of his life. In 1883 Southall spent eight weeks in Italy, studying the early masters, and on his return he began to experiment with the tempera technique. Meanwhile, through an uncle, he had made the acquaintance of John Ruskin, who commissioned him to design a museum for the Guild of St George at Bewdley (see lot 193). The project fell through, but in order to prepare himself for it he re-visited Italy in 1886. He also received encouragement from William Blake Richmond and Burne-Jones, to whom he paid a number of visits 1893-7. He began to exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1895, showing there regularly until 1942, two years before his death. He also supported the New Gallery (1897-1909), the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists (associate 1898, full member 1902), and the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society (1899-1923). He was elected to the Art Workers' Guild in 1910. In 1901, together with Walter Crane, J.D. Batten and others, Southall founded the Society of Painters in Tempera. He was undoubtedly the single most important exponent of the tempera revival. Though never, like so many members of the Birmingham Group, on the staff of the local Art School, he gave lessons on tempera painting in his Edgbaston studio and lectured on the subject widely. As well as literary figure subjects, he painted genre scenes, portraits and landscapes. His wife, Anna Elizabeth, a first cousin whom he married in 1903, appears in many of his pictures (see lot 201) and often helped to decorate their elaborate gilded frames. Southall was a leading figure among Birmingham Quakers, a Socialist and a pacifist. He campaigned vigorously against the conduct of the Great War, during which he painted a fresco of 'Corporation Street, Birmingham, in March 1914' on the staircase of the Birmingham Art Gallery (see lots 204 and 213). In later life he joined the New English Art Club and the Royal Watercolour Society (1925), participated in joint exhibitions with other Birmingham and tempera painters, held a number of one-man shows (notably at the Alpine Club, 1922), and, building on the success of an exhibition at the Galeries Georges Petit in Paris in 1910, established a considerable international reputation. He and his wife paid frequent visits to Italy, as well as to France, Suffolk, Cornwall and elsewhere. These holidays provided him with many landscape and figure subjects (see lots 194 and 209). In 1933 Southall was appointed Professor of Painting at the R.B.S.A., of which he became President six years later. In 1937 he embarked on another mural in a public building in Birmingham, this time in the Council House, but the scheme was not completed. In August that year he underwent a major operation from which he never fully recovered, and he died in 1944. A memorial exhibition was seen in Birmingham, at the R.W.S. and in Bournemouth the following year. His widow, who had played such a large part in his career as model and technical assistant, died in 1947. Bibliography: Joseph Southall 1861-1944 Artist-Craftsman, catalogue of exhibition at the Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery and the Fine Art Society, London, 1980.

Joseph Edward Southall, R.W.S. (1861-1944)

Self-portrait wearing a fez; Self-portrait of the artist with brushes in his hand; and Self-portrait in a suit (two illustrated)

Details

Joseph Edward Southall, R.W.S. (1861-1944)
Self-portrait wearing a fez; Self-portrait of the artist with brushes in his hand; and Self-portrait in a suit (two illustrated)
the first signed with monogram and dated '1943' (lower left); the second signed and inscribed 'Joseph E. Southall/13 Charlotte Road/Edgbaston' (lower right); and the third signed with monogram and dated '1918' (lower right)
pencil, two unframed
13 x 8¾ in. (33 x 22.3 cm.); and smaller (3)

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

If you wish to view the condition report of this lot, please sign in to your account.

View condition report

Lot Essay

The first drawing was executed a year before Southall's death at the age of 83 and may well have been his last work of this kind. He was in the habit of wearing a fez; for other examples, see the exhibition catalogue, pp. 55-56, nos. E3 (1896) and E5 (1933) (both illustrated). Southall had a particular fondness for painting self-portraits.

The drawing showing the artist holding brushes is squared for transfer and is perhaps for an unidentified painting or mural.

The last drawing in the lot is a study for a self-portrait with a landscape background, dated 1925, currently in a private collection.

More from The Lyndon Goodwin Harris Collection of Watercolours by Albert Goodwin, Joseph Edward Southall & Other Artists

View All