The Pitman Painter
From deep under the County Durham landscape, one miner came to the surface and painted pictures of his underground world
It’s not often that beauty and tranquility get used to describe coal mining. The hard-working people of mining communities looked out for each other as they grafted in the bowels of the earth, but few of them would use these words to describe it.
For younger generations and those who never went down a coal mine, it’s hard to picture just what life was like in the workplace and the towns and villages that thrived because coal was dug. Throughout the 20th century, a Spennymoor miner did his best to paint this picture and went on to build a vast portfolio that has given generations an image of life at the coal face and in a colliery community for years since.
Born in 1919, Cornish first became a coal miner in 1933 at the age of just 14. He had a basic start to life, and when reflecting called the conditions in which he lived during his early years ‘primitive’. At the age of seven, Norman contracted diphtheria and was very sick. Through this childhood, he suffered from being part of a generation and class where education was restricted.
To support his family, Cornish got work as a miner and would start painting in his spare time. There was a stigma in the arts community towards working-class painters, and Cornish was a victim of this. Referred to as ‘Sunday painters’, the arts industry looked down on painters like Cornish for their occupation.
In 1939 Britain entered into the Second World War, and Cornish was lined up to The Slade School of Fine Art in London. However, mining was made a ‘reserved occupation’ and as a result, Cornish spent the war underground.
He spent decades working underground, leaving the industry in 1966 with years of experience, and the following year, his art career stepped up a notch. Cornish began studying at Sunderland Art College, where he was also looked down on for his background and lack of academic experience.
Cornish’s experiences underground gave his work a raw edge, and it is this influence that made his pieces and style so well renowned with future generations. There is a rugged beauty to some of his works, with ‘Pit Road near a Colliery, Winter’ being one example.
Arguably one of his most famous, the piece shows men bracing an icy winter day as they make their way to the colliery. It was a scene that would have been repeated in pit villages up and down the country for decades.
Norman Cornish was able to create beauty in scenes of brutal industrialism, and he was able to add an extra level of personality. The man went on to spend more time as a professional artist than he did as a coal miner, and during a lengthy career in the arts Cornish opened up a window to a world that to us in 2024 is long gone.
An often grim and dangerous job and lifestyle, Cornish will be forever remembered as a man from humble beginnings who was able to build on an incredible talent to make a name for himself and bring life in a County Durham pit village to the eyes of so many people.
