VALUABLE PAINTING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 April 1940, Page 3

VALUABLE PAINTING

BIRMINGHAM’S POSSESSION. In the midst of war the second city of England receives a gift of peace. Birmingham has seen the completion of the first stage of a big wall painting in the banqueting hall of its Council House. It shows a figure of Peace, the fruits of the fertile earth beside her. and cornfields and blue hills like the Malverns behind. It is a rare painting because it is done in l the true fresco manner used by the great Italian painters four and five centuries ago. Art must be above Circumstance, thinks Joseph Southall who painted it. and the time will come when people looking on a painting such as this must feel that it truly represents the time in which they live. Though ovei 70 Mr Southall gave three years to thi; work, offering time and skill to the city and hoping his example would aid the revival of wall painting in England. He was helped by young painters from Birmingham Central College of Art. Mr Southall has spent his life learning this ancient method that modern painters have ignored: It was after many long visits to Italy that he became an authority on fresco work in which the pigment is applied while the plaster ground is still moist. Always experimenting with colours, ho lias kept some of them for 40 years to see if they would fade., His studio is full of bright mineral powders from all. parts of the earth; and others he has ground for himself after looking for the colours he wanted in the stout of English hills.