Joseph Southall Biography
Joseph Southall was one of the leading artists of the Birmingham Group of Joseph Edward Southall, RWS RBSA NEAC, 1861-1944s-Craftsmen. At the end of the century, Burne-Jones's proximity to the group predisposed the younger artists to emulate his decorative, medievalising style and towards an interest in Pre-Raphaelitism. The revival of tempera painting in Burne-Jones's circle was immediately taken up and perfected by the Birmingham Group led by Joseph Southall, who had already experimented with the technique, having seen the work of Benozzo Gozzolia and Carpaccio during his visit to Italy in 1883. This difficult technique, using the yolk of egg, was the most important panel painting technique of the medieval period and emerged in the late Pre-Raphaelite circles as an inevitable result of their love of quattrocento painting. Southall founded The Society of Painters in Tempera in November 1901 along with John Dixon Batten, William Holman Hunt and Walter Crane. Southall's writings on tempera in Papers of the Society of Painters in Tempera have been of great importance in the revival of the technique.