Reading the News

Joseph Syddall was born in the village of Old Whittington, near Chesterfield, the son of a local carpenter. After a time working as a clerk for a local solicitor he was funded by Derbyshire philanthropist to study at Sir Hubert von Herkomer’s School of Art in Bushey. He initially worked as an illustrator, making a number of illustrations for Tess of the D’Urbervilles for The Graphic magazine in the 1890s. After the Great War he designed the war memorials in Old Whittington and in Dronfield, Derbyshire. He painted and exhibited portraits and landscapes in oil, pastel and watercolour and exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1898 and 1910. At Bushey he had met fellow student Annea Spong and in 1920 he left Chesterfield to set up home with her in Hampstead. Spong was an ardent suffragette and a student and then teacher of the Isadora Duncan school of Natural Movement dance. There is a large group of his works in the collection of Chesterfield Museum and Art Gallery.