Joseph Edward Worrall - The Orange Seller

1829-1913

signed and dated J E Worrall 1867-68';
oil on panel
12 x 9in. (30.5 x 23cm.)

Possibly Liverpool, Liverpool Academy, 1867. no.70. as 'Three-a-Penny' (15 gns.)

Much more is known about this interesting Liverpool artist than the dictionaries tell us; even his full names and dates are not generally recorded. Born in St Paul's Square, Liverpool, on 13 July 1829. he was educated at the Mechanics Institute in Mount Street and trained as a lithographer with the firm of McClure, McDonald and Macgregor. He also attended life-classes at the Royal Institution in Colquitt Street and belonged to the Liverpool Sketching Club, which met at members houses, the Liverpool Art Club or the Liverpool Academy. He exhibited at the latter at least from 1856, and was still showing there in 1875. Meanwhile in the 1860s, the period of his greatest artistic activity, he showed in London at the Royal Academy (5 works 1862-68) and Suffolk Street (4 works 1863-67), as well as at the annual exhibitions in Manchester and Leeds. He married about 1855 and settled at 6 Parker Street, Liverpool, but by 1864 he had moved to 231 Upper Parliament Street, where he remained until his death in September 1913 at the age of eighty-four. For several years before his death he received a pension of £50 from the Turner fund administered by the Royal Academy. Of his large family, only two children survived him, a son who worked on the New English Dictionary and a daughter who is recorded doing 'aeroplane work', i.e. camouflage. during the First World War. She was presumably the Miss Ella Worrall who exhibited two miniatures at the RA in 1903-4, sending from her father's address in Liverpool.

Worrall's work is now extremely rare. There is nothing in the Walker An Gallery. Liverpool, and only one picture, in an English private collection, is found in his Witt Library file, signed and dated 1863. It shows a young girl in an apron sitting beside a basket of fish in a rocky coastal landscape. From the titles of his exhibited pictures we know that he painted 'pure' landscapes and the occasional portrait. He also tried his hand at sculpture, showing two wax statuettes at the RA in 1868. But his main interest lay in genre scenes. Most of these seem to have been unpretentious modern subjects such as the present picture and the 'fishergirl' in the Witt, but he may sometimes have been more ambitious. An Escaped Prisoner (Suffolk Street 1864) sounds dramatic and perhaps historical; A Lover's Complaint (Suffolk Street 1867) was accompanied m the catalogue by a quotation from Shakespeare; while Music versus Work (RA 1864) and Nature and Art (Liverpool Academy 1875) hint at an awareness of 'aesthetic' or symbolist values.

Worrall belonged to the group of Liverpool painters who formeed an important local offshoot of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Though they were well aware of what the leaders of the movement were doing in London, much of their inspiration derived from the pictures that Hunt, Millais and Madox Brown sent to the Liverpool Academy in the 1850s and which were often awarded the Academy's £50 annual prize. Worrall was a little younger than the senior members of the Liverpool group such as William Davis (1812-1873), W.I. Windus (1822-1907) and Daniel Alexander Williamson (1823-1903). He was nearer in age to James Campbell (1828-1893) and probably to John J. Lee (H.1860-1867), and his career in many ways parallels theirs; all three flourished in the late 1850s or the 1860s and specialised in genre subjects, depicted with a PreRaphaelite intensity of feeling, a minute attention to detail, and an engaging dash of naivety. The three painters would almost certainly have known one another during their formative years in Liverpool, although Worrall may have lost touch with the others when Campbell moved to London in 1862, followed by Lee about four years later.

We are Grateful to Mary Bennett and to Edward Morris, Curator of Fine Art at the Walker Art Gallery. Liverpool. for their help in preparing this entry.