Joseph Webb ARE

1908 - 1962

Born in London, the son of a market gardener, Joseph Webb studied at Ealing and Chiswick Schools of Art, and then the Hospitalfield House School of Art in Arbroath. From 1928, he studied etching under Hubert Schroeder at Chiswick, then from 1929 in Chipping Campden with F.L. Griggs, who became his dominant influence on his technique and subject matter, notably medieval buildings in intensely idealised, mystical landscapes, charged with a spiritual and mystical intensity. In 1929, he was elected an Associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers (R.E.). Along with his slightly older contemporaries, Graham Sutherland, Paul Drury, and Robin Tanner, and like Griggs, his work was deeply influenced by the rediscovery of Samuel Palmer, as well as by William Blake's writings. Webb developed beliefs in Eastern religions, Theosophy, astrology, mysticism and the occult, expressing these beliefs through his prints and increasingly his paintings. With the end of the etching boom following the 1929 Wall Street Crash, he started to supplement his income by teaching at the Chiswick School of Art and by portrait painting and poster design. By the 1950s, Webb abandoned printmaking and made increasingly mystical and personal paintings, exacerbated by mental instability. He left a bequest to the R.E. to fund an annual award for a young etcher.