Catalogue Number
NMLH.1995.36
Object Name
Sculpture
Title
Bronze bust of George Lansbury by Jussuf Abbo, 1938
Place
Poplar; Hackney; Shoreditch & London & England & UK
People
Lansbury, George; Myrtle [Lansbury], Dorothy Lansbury; Abbo, Jussuf
Date
1938
Creator(s)
Abbo, Jussuf (Sculptor)
Description
George Lansbury
This bronze bust of George Lansbury was produced by the Egyptian sculptor Jussuf Abbo in 1938 and presented by Dorothy Lansbury, a daughter, to the London Borough of Shoreditch.
George Lansbury, a lifelong Christian Socialist and pacifist, fought long and hard for the poor and unemployed of East London. In 1921 he was amongst those Poplar borough councillors who opposed the introduction of a high municipal rate, imposed by central government, in that borough. Poplar was one of the poorest boroughs in London.
Lansbury became a Member of Parliament for Bow and Bromley in 1910, was elected Mayor of Poplar in 1919, and from 1931 to 1935 was leader of the Labour Party.
Jussuf Abbo
Jussuf was born in 1890 into a large poverty-stricken Jewish farming community in Safed (Galilee), then under the governance of the Ottoman Empire. He began to show a talent for art during primary school and, being recognised as gifted and intelligent, gained a place in a French Alliance Israelite School in Jerusalem. He went on to study at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin and throughout the 1920âs he exhibited in major galleries in Germany and was an established portrait sculptor and an active member of the artistic community.
Abbo, his wife Ruth and their young son were forced to flee Nazi Germany in 1935 and, after many difficulties, eventually moved to England. In 1937 the Society of Friends (Quakers) commissioned Abbo to create this sculpture of Lansbury to mark their admiration and gratitude for the work of this leader of the peace movement.
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