Norman Cornish
Went down the pit at fourteen and painted the pit village for the rest of his life.
Norman Cornish was born at Spennymoor in County Durham in 1919 and started at the Dean and Chapter colliery at fourteen. He joined the Spennymoor Settlement sketching club, painted in the evenings after shifts for thirty-three years, and went full time in 1966 when his back gave out. The subject is the place he lived in: men at the bar of the Barking Dog, the road home in the rain, whippets, children on the street, the pit head, and the crowded bar interiors that are the works most asked for. He is the central figure of the north-eastern mining art tradition alongside Tom McGuinness, and he died in 2014.
The pictures are unique and the range of media is wide — oils on board, but also a very large number of drawings in flow pen, charcoal, pastel and mixed media, which were his working method and which come to market constantly. Board and paper supports mean condition questions are ordinary ones: foxing, light damage and old tape on the reverse of the works on paper. Signed limited-edition prints exist and are separate from the drawings. Provenance in the north-east is usually straightforward and traceable to named galleries.
If you own a work by Norman Cornish
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