NORMAN CORNISH has made it into Downing Street.
The great painter from the Durham coalfield has not been called into Rishi Sunak’s cabinet, but instead one of his works has been selected to hang on the walls of the corridors of power.
The Pit Road, showing a miner trudging dutifully to work beneath telegraph poles shaped like crucifixes, is one of nine works from the Laing Art Gallery, in Newcastle, that have been selected to hang in the main corridor at No 10 for the year.
Visitors to the Prime Minister’s home are now greeted by an impressive picture of the Tyne Bridge under construction.
A dramatic view of the final stages of construction of Newcastle’s most recognisable landmark, with the two sides of the bridge’s distinctive parabolic arch being swung into place by overhead cranes. Construction by Teesside steelmakers Dorman Long finished on February 25, 1928, and was opened by King George V on October 10, 1928. The painting is by Edward Dickey, from Belfast, who from 1926 to 1931 was professor of fine art and director of King Edward VII School of Art, Armstrong College in Newcastle
For the last 20 years, the Government Art Collection has run a “Number 10 Museum in Residence” scheme showcasing works held in regional collections, Recently, pictures from Manchester, Swansea and Coventry have been shown, and this year the Laing has been chosen.
The Laing is a remarkable gallery as it was built with a donation of £30,000 in 1899 from beer and wine merchant Alexander Laing to celebrate his 50th year in business in Newcastle but as he was not a collector, there was nothing to go in it when it opened in 1904. However, since then, it has received many donations and is now home to one of the most important collections in the north. From its collection, it has selected five cityscapes and four pieces by artists like Norman who have been inspired by its landscape.
Julie Milne, Chief Curator of Art Galleries at Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums which runs the Laing, said: “Selecting the paintings has enabled us to see the works from a fresh perspective – to hone and highlight narratives about the North East. We are delighted that our wonderful pictures will be seen by a range of people, from the UK and around the world, as they pass through the doors of Number 10.”
Cornish did many versions of this painting of his three mile walk into work at the colliery, many of them, it has to be said, a lot warmer than this solitary trudge. Before and after every shift every day, there must have been thousands of miners across the Durham coalfield walking to and from work, with many of them following the same path for decades
Spennymoor’s Cornish is used to his art being seen by prime ministers: Conservative leader Ted Heath bought two of his paintings and it is believed that Labour’s Harold Wilson also had one.
READ MORE: WILL THE WORK OF NORMAN CORNISH PASS THE TEST OF TIME?
“My father had no political agenda, and his art was never making any political statement,” says his son, John. “The only statement he was making was about how much he admired his community which he wanted to record.
“The only real political incident that I can remember is that he was nervous about having his photograph taken with Ted Heath in case it was seen by people at home which was then a staunch Labour area.” Heath bought his first picture – Man at the Bar, drawn at the Hillingdon pub, now the site of a care home, which was over the road from the Cornish family home in Whitworth Terrace – from the Stone Gallery in Newcastle. The gallery proprietors tried to arrange a promotional picture with the premier, but for fear of upsetting the neighbours, Norman politely declined, even though he was quietly “chuffed” by the sale.
“I don’t think he would have minded at all for his work to be put in Downing Street in a position where people from other regions and countries could see it and where it would stimulate their conversations about the north,” says John. “He wanted people to like his work and reflect upon their lives.
“He wasn’t one for self-publicity, but when his work got greater attention, he was quietly very proud.”
Nights really were dark in the days before electric lights became ubiquitous yet the artist finds plenty of light in the darkness for this nighttime view of a man pushing a cart across tramlines on the Newcastle Quayside – the silvery light of the moon reflects quite brilliantly on the wet cobbles and contrasts with the yellow lights on the bridge and coming from the windows. The artist, Arthur Grimshaw, was one of a family of artists based in Leeds who specialised in painting the streets and docklands of England's northern cities. He was also a successful composer, organist and conductor.
Arts and Heritage Minister Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay said: “I’m delighted that visitors over the next year will get to learn more about the proud culture and rich heritage of Tyneside thanks to this partnership with the Laing Art Gallery. The first thing they’ll see after walking through that famous front door is a huge portrait of the Tyne Bridge, which fills my Geordie heart with pride.”
Today’s front cover shows the brightly-lit shops of St Nicholas Street, with the distinctive spire of St Nicholas’ Cathedral behind – the Lantern Tower, built in 1448, is 60 metres high and for many years was Newcastle’s tallest building and so its light and unusual crown shape helped guide ships up the Tyne. The artist, Louis Grimshaw, mainly painted in London but appears to have made a short visit to Newcastle in 1902. He was one of a family of artists who specialised in painting the streets and docklands of England's northern cities, but in 1905, he abandoned painting to become a cartographer.
A great scene from The Hoppings, the annual travelling fair that sets up on the Town Moor and now attracts 300,000 visitors. The first fair was held in 1882 as a temperance counter-attraction to the intemperate goings-on at the annual race week at Newcastle racecourse. The artist, Byron Dawson, came from Oxfordshire to Newcastle as an apprentice engineer but studied art at Armstrong College and then turned professional.
This piece, possibly constructed from a tea chest, uses collage to depict the Western facade of Durham’s mighty cathedral. Rowntree, who was Professor of Fine Art at Newcastle University between 1959 to 1980, uses the overlapping surfaces of wood to create depth and to mimic the play of light on the cathedral’s outer walls.
This picture of the biblical story of Noah’s Ark is Glover's best known work. She was born in 1919, studied at King’s College (now Newcastle University) from where she graduated and began teaching only to die in 1944, aged 25, after a riding accident.
Born at Dunston, near Gateshead, Ward studied at King’s College (now Newcastle University) and exhibited widely in the North East in later years. She was fascinated by local rural landscapes and sought to recreate them in her work. Here she uses plaster to echo the texture of cut quartz.
From 1954 to 1961, Pasmore was the Master of Painting in the Fine Art Department of Durham University's Kings College (which became Newcastle university). He was very interested in the boundary between abstract art and architecture, so when in 1955, he was appointed as the Consulting Director of Architectural Design for the new town of Peterlee, he turned the town centre into a canvas for his architectural art, with the abstract collection of square shapes that is the Apollo Pavilion as its centrepiece. It is one of the most Marmite buildings in the North East. The painting sent to Downing Street shows a different side to him, as it is his wife, Wendy, captured with the mirror.
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