Joseph Edward Southall 1861-1944. British School Early 20th.Century Chalk Drawing. Portrait of a young blue eyed blonde girl with a white ribbon in her hair. Monogrammed and dated lower left III 1908. Coloured chalks on wove paper, some surface grubbiness light foxing and repair. Presented in a period Watts Style frame. Provenance: Elizabeth Baker The Artist's Niece, Peyton Skipwith, Liss Llewellyn Fine Art.
18.3 by 31 cms image. 35 by 47.5 cms Overall in frame.
Southall was a leading figure in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Arts and Crafts Movement, leader of the Birmingham Guild of Artist-Craftsmen, one of the last outposts of Romanticism in the visual arts, and an important link between the later Pre-Raphaelites and the turn of the century Slade School Symbolists.
A Quaker, Southall was an active socialist and pacifist, initially as a radical member of the Liberal and later of the Independent Labour Party.
Southall was elected an Associate of the Royal Society of Birmingham Artists (RBSA) in 1898 and Member in 1902. He became President of the Society in 1939 and stayed in this post until his death in 1944.