The Pegasus mural still stands defiantly on the side of the last house on Brotherton Street after nearly 3O years.
The mural once depicted Pegasus rising from the head of Medusa, but only Pegasus remains visible under the flaking paint that now covers the original painting, although it is still a magical sight. I spoke to Steve Field, the mural’s artist, about how he came to create it.
“There was a competition initiated by a Sheffield architecture student called Matt Bruce, who also owned the house. Lecturers from the Art School (now Sheffield Hallam) and Sheffield University chose my design and Dulux supplied the paint.The runner-up design, by an art student, featured cartoon hippos!”
Steve, who was a postgraduate architecture student at the time, displayed drawings of how the mural might look in the window of the house and at the University to gauge public opinion of the plan. The overall feeling seems to have been positive and it was painted in the summer of 1977.
“I painted the mural from a mobile tower with a bit of help from my then girlfriend and a fellow student.The painting was based on the classical myth, in which Pegasus rises from the head of Medusa, against a backdrop of Mount Parnassus.The composition was worked out mathematically to fit the gable end.”
