ENVELOPED in darkness and contorted into a claustrophobic space with a pick poised to strike, the miner is captured in a timeless moment of toil at the coal face.

Under the Coaly Tyne, painted by John Hodgson Campbell in 1887, is one the earliest paintings to faithfully depict the subterranean world of the North-East coal miner – and one of many captivating images in the Shafts of Light exhibition at the Bowes Museum, in Barnard Castle.

Running since May, the display is the largest of its kind, illustrating the working environment of coalminers through their own interpretation of life in and around pits, allowing the viewer to experience through the artists’ eyes the severe working conditions and social climate of the time.

Among the many highlights are powerful miniature woodcuts of George Bisill, Ted Holloway’s Testing for Gas and Bob Olley’s dramatic Off the Way and Gilbert Daykin's Miner in Chains.

An early 1880s unfinished oil captures a shimmering sea of banners at the Durham Miners' Gala, while contemporary take on the event by John Bird exudes a sense of post-war confidence.

No miners’ exhibition would be complete without works by the two doyens of the genre, Norman Cornish and Tom McGuiness.

Over half the paintings 70 on show are part of the vast Gemini Collection of Dr Bob McManners and Gillian Wales, who are curating the exhibition.

And with only one week left the question on all art-lovers lips has been – what is going to happen to this trove?

They can rest assured the curators are determined to keep the collection together and hopefully one day have it on permanent public display.

Dr McManners says: “Members of staff at Bowes Museum have told us it has been great success in terms of visitor numbers.

“The exhibition has obviously hit the nail on the head. We are told that it has appealed to a different clientèle - people who wouldn’t normally go to see art exhibitions.

“It has brought people in for sociological reasons as much as for artistic reasons.”

The Gemini Collection sprang from the curators’ association with Tom McGuinness, of Bishop Auckland.

Dr McManners says: “He hadn’t had his work catalogued and in early 90s we approached him asked if we could catalogue his work.

“While doing this we became aware, not just of him and Norman Cornish, but whole raft of mining artists out there.

“They took their work seriously therefore we thought should take it seriously too.

“Nothing had been written about them at all and some of them were of the highest quality, right across the board.

“That is when we started researching our book Shafts of Light which is now in its second edition."

He adds: “We also aware the art was disappearing from living memory, because people were dying out and the pictures had not been valued as they should have been.

“I think a lot of that was because miners thought it wasn’t the right thing to do – they should be racing whippets or growing big leeks, rather than painting pictures.

“Consequently they didn’t value their art perhaps as much as they should have done.

“A lot of paintings were for themselves and not for exhibition so we began to collect their works – and our collection now extends to over 250 pictures.”

“We have produced another book about the Spennymoor Settlement and have been asked to do a Norman Cornish biography.

“Any money that we have made from book sales we have reinvested in art and it continues to increase."

Smaller exhibitions have been pu on throughout the UK and in France and Belgium.

Dr McManners says: “We want the pictures to be seen. It is great to get them out there.

“We are determined to keep the collection together as a collection.

“We would like to think that the mining art was available for long-term a exhibition, preferably somewhere in the Durham coalfield.

“We would like to secure somewhere where these pictures can be permanently displayed, so it is our intention to put them into a trust – leaving the trust to run itself when we are passed and gone.”

The hope is for a benefactor to provide the help needed to ensure that dream becomes a reality - and the works can been seen again together in all their glory after the exhibition ends on Sunday,, September 21.