Ashington Group of Pitmen Painters

The Group first came together as a Workers Educational Association class, that, having studied evolution, decided to try something different. In October 1934 former winner of the prestigious Prix de Rome, Robert Lyon, a lecturer at Armstrong College in Newcastle upon Tyne, then part of Durham University, was invited to discuss the possibility of forming an art appreciation class in the district. Bob Lyon began by showing slides of Michelangelo's work but had no way of telling what would be the most suitable course to pursue. After a few awkward ‘lectures’ he hit on the notion of setting examples, making the class members experiment for themselves in different techniques, starting with lino-cutting and progressing to palette knives and then on to brushes. Lyon set subjects weekly and members would work out what to paint at home and bring the results in to be criticised by their peers in the group. Before very long the miners’ natural abilities came to the fore and the work was discussed in public.

So the second chapter began, the class became a group and in 1936 held its first exhibition in the Hatton Gallery in Armstrong College, Newcastle. The Group developed its own momentum and their paintings became increasingly localised, portraying their environs and daily lives. During the 1930’s, outsiders became fascinated by what they tended to regard as a rare and admirable exercise in working men’s art. To the organisers of Mass Observation, it represented a true development of documentary culture. These men painted their own lives testifying to a familiarity that no one else, from trained art backgrounds, could truly understand. When the war came, the men painted the building of shelters, the arrangements for the distribution of gas masks, for evacuations and ‘Dig for Victory’.

After the war, the Group wrote its own constitution and settled into a new chapter. They moved their hut from Longhorsley to Ashington. They met weekly, tried sculpture, and dabbled in abstraction, but remained basically loyal to Lyons' early teachings, that they should express themselves by painting what they knew. In the 1970’s there was a revival of interest in the Group from outside the mining community. Exhibitions in Durham and in the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London brought the paintings to a wider audience. They were shown in Germany, the Netherlands, and in 1980 were taken to China and shown as the first exhibition from the West since the Cultural Revolution.

The core artist miners involved were George Blessed (1904–1997), George Brownrigg (1903-1969), Leslie Brownrigg (1905–1974), William Crichton,(1910-1983), J. Dobson, Jimmy Floyd (1898-1974), Andrew Crozier Foreman (1903-1964), Jack F. Harrison (1904–2004), Oliver Kilbourn (1904-1993), Fred Laidler (1918–1988), George Jude McLean (1920–1993), Tom P. McSloy (1890-1953), Andrew Rankin, (fl.1935–c.1938), Len Robinson (1896–1987), Arthur Fletcher Whinnom, (1899–1962), Harry Wilson (1898-1972) and Harry Youngs. In 1989 a permanent gallery was established for the Group’s collection of paintings at Woodhorn Colliery Museum in Ashington