Joseph Edward Southall was an English artist associated with the Arts and Crafts movement and the leader of the Birmingham Group of Artist-Craftsmen. This drawing depicts two ladies walking together a few months before the end of the First World War. Southall was a Quaker and a pacifist, and in the same month as this drawing he began Belgium Supported by Hope, now in the collection of the Tate, through which he sought to encourage the renewal of Belgium after the war. He painted very little during this period, instead dedicating himself to anti-war campaigning in Birmingham.