Sketch for Peace, by Joseph Southall

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Date:1937

Description:This sketch is from a collection of material relating to the artist Joseph Southall held at the Birmingham Museum and Art Galleries. Southall was born into a Nottingham Quaker family in 1861. On the death of his father the following year his mother brought him to Birmingham. He first learned to paint at the Friends' School in Yorkshire, before joining the Birmingham firm of architects, Martin and Chamberlain, which he left in 1882 to attend the Birmingham School of Art. Here he met A.J. Gaskin and became one of the emerging Birmingham Group, an important group of artists heavily influenced by Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris and John Ruskin.<small><sup>1</sup></small>

In the 1880s Southall moved into a property belonging to his uncle, George Baker, at 13 Charlotte Road, Edgbaston, which became his lifelong home. During this period he toured Italy, where he studied the work of early Renaissance artists; this inspired his experiments with tempera, a technique in which he led a significant revival. In 1903 he married Anne Baker his first cousin, whilst his reputation as an artist reached its peak of international success at an exhibition of his work held at the Galerie George Petit, Paris, in 1910.

Throughout his life, and as a committed Socialist and radical activist, Southall was a leading figure in Birmingham Quakerism. When the European conflict broke out in 1914 he diverted most of his energies into pacifism. He dropped his allegiance to the Liberal Party and immediately joined the Independent Labour Party, becoming Chairman of the Birmingham City Branch. The ILP was the one left-wing body that consistently maintained its opposition to the war. He also chaired the Birmingham Auxiliary of the Peace Society and was a joint Vice-President of the Birmingham and District Passive Resistance League.

Despite his outspoken stance against the war, Southall was commissioned by the city to produce the fresco that stands at the head of the staircase of the entrance to Birmingham Art Gallery. Corporation Street, Birmingham in March 1914 conveys its pacifist politics by implication, providing the population with an image of their recent pre-war community life. He also painted The Return of Peace, one of the huge murals for the Hall of Heroes presented at the 1916 Royal Academy Arts and Crafts Exhibition in London. This national patriotic celebration included work by two other members of the Birmingham Group, Henry Payne and Charles Gere. Only Payne’s original mural survives; Southall’s designs and studies for this work show that his mural was over twenty feet high and consisted of a family in modern dress below an angel bearing the fruits of peace. Nonetheless, during this period, the artist’s pronounced pacifist views found their most powerful expression in a series of illustrations that were published in radical newspapers and pamphlets.


<font color="#666633"><small><sup>1</sup> Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online http://www.oxforddnb.com/<;/small></font>

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Image courtesy of: Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery

Donor ref:BM&AG: 1981P71 (89/1872)

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