Joseph Edward Southall Sold at Auction Prices

Painter, Water color painter, Freskomaler, copperplate engraver, b. 1861 - d. 1944

(born 1861; died 1944) British artist. Joseph Edward Southall was one of the most important members of the Birmingham Group, the circle of Birmingham artists who came to maturity in the 1880s and had a strong corporate identity defined by their close association with the Birmingham School of Art, their commitment to the Arts and Crafts, and their preference for tempera as a painting medium. Another bond was their devotion to the legacy of Edward Burne-Jones, the English painter and decorative artist, who was himself a Birmingham man and the leading figure in the second phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Southall and his friend Arthur Gaskin forged strong links with Burne-Jones after having met him when he gave lessons at their school in Birmingham. Like all the Birmingham Group, Southall featured in the Last Romantics exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery in 1989. The exhibition was principally concerned with those artists who attempted to maintain the Pre-Raphaelite tradition far into the twentieth century, often deliberately swimming against the tide of modernism, and Southall is a particularly interesting figure in this context. His roots lay deep in Pre-Raphaelitism. He cultivated an anachronistic style owing much to early Italian painting. He was much admired abroad, exhibiting in Paris and having his work published in the Studio, which had a wide European circulation. Working so meticulously in tempera, Southall produced a comparatively small number of pictures.
Credit: Christie’s, London, November 27, 2002- Important British Art. Lot 1