LAST week, Memories told how 90-year-old Darlington artist Bill Rees is this week holding his first solo exhibition for decades in the 200-year-old stable block at Sedbury Hall, near Scotch Corner.
Sedbury Hall is owned by CM and William Baker Baker who are turning the stables into an artistic hub. This, it turns out, is a family trait because Mr Baker Baker’s grandmother’s generosity inspired a young Spennymoor artist called Norman Cornish.
READ NEXT: HOW THE KING'S STABLES ARE BECOMING AN ARTISTIC HUB NEAR SCOTCH CORNER
Norman started working down the pit when he was 14 in 1933 but went to the Spennymoor Settlement Sketching Club to pursue his artistic hobby. The club put on exhibitions, one of which was attended by Mrs HC Baker-Baker of Elemore Hall, near Pittington. She was so impressed by the work, especially by the boy Cornish, that she donated 10 guineas to the club “to purchase oil paints”.
Ten guineas today is worth more than £900 – and oil paints before the Second World War were too expensive for a pitman like Norman.
“Suddenly, a new dimension to Cornish’s early work was enabled via this philanthropic gesture and he was quick to respond with his first oil painting, a study called ‘My Sister Ella’, which he painted over several days in his parent’s bedroom and was exhibited in 1940 at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle,” says Norman’s son-in-law, Mike Thornton, who tells this tale in the newly-published book, Test of Time.
“Painting in oils was a huge step forward for the young Cornish and this new approach required a new technique as well as additional materials. The opportunity to develop this aspect of his work began to exert a profound influence upon his development as an artist.”
The Baker-Baker family sold Grade I listed Elemore Hall to Durham County Council in 1947, and it is now a special school for secondary aged pupils who have social, emotional and mental health difficulties.
The Baker-Bakers moved to Sedbury, where the centuries old hall had been replaced by an arts and crafts house in 1927. The family are descended from Sir George Baker (1596-1667), who was Recorder of Newcastle and had Crook Hall, near Durham, as his principal home.
However, by the middle of the 19th Century, his descendant, another George Baker, only had a daughter, Isabella, who stood to inherit Elemore and Crook halls. In 1844, Isabella married Colonel Henry Tower and so, in his will, George stipulated that Isabella’s children had to change their surname to Baker before they could take charge of the Baker halls.
But Isabella had named her eldest son Henry Joseph Baker Tower, and so, after much lawyerly analysis of the will, it was decided that before he could inherit, he had to become Henry Joseph Baker Baker.
READ MORE: WILL NORMAN CORNISH'S WORK PASS THE TEST OF TIME?
- Bill Rees’ exhibition at the Baker-Baker’s Sedbury Hall stables, on the A66 near Scotch Corner, runs 10am to 4pm until Friday, November 24. The Test of Time is available from normancornish.com
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