The Pitmen Painters of Ashington

In 1934, in the coal-black heart of Northumberland, a group of miners signed up for an evening class on art appreciation. They didn't want to look at slides of the Renaissance. They wanted to paint. What followed was one of the most remarkable stories in British art.

Paint What You Know

Ashington in the 1930s was the biggest pit village in the world. Thirty collieries within a five-mile radius. A population of 40,000, almost every man employed by the Woodhorn and Ellington mines. Life was coal — the getting of it, the dust of it, the danger of it.

The Workers' Educational Association had been running evening classes in the town since 1927 — evolution, economics, the usual fare. But when the men requested a class on art, the WEA turned to Robert Lyon, a painter and lecturer at Durham University (later King's College Newcastle, now Newcastle University), to teach them.

Lyon arrived with slides of Italian Renaissance masterpieces — religious scenes, mythological subjects, classical nudes. The miners stared blankly. These images meant nothing to men who spent their days a thousand feet underground. Lyon quickly abandoned the slides and gave them the advice that would change everything:

"Paint what you know." — Robert Lyon to the Ashington Group, 1934

And so they did. On scraps of plywood, slabs of cardboard, and whatever canvas they could afford, the miners began to paint the world they lived in — the coal face, the pithead baths, the pigeon crees, the chip shop, the allotments, the whippet track. They painted with the honesty of men who had nothing to prove and no one to impress.

The Artists

The group formally named itself The Ashington Group in 1936, the same year they held their first exhibition at the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle. The core members were:

Other members included Arthur Whinnom, George Blessed, William Crichton, Andrew Crozier Foreman (who painted "The Bar, Playing Dominoes"), Tom McSloy, Len Robinson, and Andrew Rankin. At its peak, the group had around twenty active members.

What They Painted

The paintings are a complete visual record of a mining community that no longer exists. They painted what they saw every day:

Painting	Artist	Date
The Miner	Leslie Brownrigg	c.1935
In the Canteen	Andrew Rankin	c.1935
The Bar, Playing Dominoes	Andrew Crozier Foreman	c.1936
Ashington Colliery, Northumberland	Harry Wilson	1936
Fish and Chips	Fred Laidler	1938–39
Re-Setting Arch Girders, Surface	Tom McSloy	1946
Coal Face	Jimmy Floyd	1947
The Pony Putter	Jack F. Harrison	c.1950
Morning, Holy Island	George Jude McLean	1959
My Life as a Pitman (39 works)	Oliver Kilbourn	1977

The World Takes Notice

The art establishment was fascinated. In 1935, the wealthy patron Helen Sutherland received seventeen miners at her home, Rock Hall in Northumberland. She made no distinction between high and low art, believing "a Pitman was as worthy as Picasso."

In 1939, Julian Trevelyan — fresh from resigning from the London Surrealist Group — organised an exhibition of their work at the Peckham Health Centre in London. The group exhibited at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, in Germany, and in the Netherlands.

Most remarkably, in 1980 the Ashington Group's work was taken to China — it was the first exhibition of Western art shown in China after the Cultural Revolution.

The Offer That Changed Everything

The most dramatic moment in the group's story centres on Oliver Kilbourn and Helen Sutherland. The wealthy patron, recognising Kilbourn's extraordinary talent, made him an offer: she would buy his freedom from the pit. She would set him up in her studio, pay his expenses, and let him paint full-time. No more coal dust. No more danger. Just art.

Kilbourn refused.

"I was a damn good miner, though I say it myself. I was strong and I liked the life. That was the life I painted." — Oliver Kilbourn

The fear was real: that leaving the community would mean losing the very thing that made his art authentic. That becoming a "professional" artist would kill the honesty in his brushstrokes. He stayed down the pit for fifty years.

From Stage to Broadway

Lee Hall — the Newcastle-born writer of Billy Elliot — learned about the group from a Guardian article and bought William Feaver's book "Pitmen Painters: The Ashington Group 1934–1984". He turned it into a play.

"The Pitmen Painters" premiered at Live Theatre, Newcastle in 2007, directed by Max Roberts. It was a sellout. It transferred to the National Theatre in London, then to the West End (Duchess Theatre), and in 2010 opened on Broadway at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre — with the original Geordie cast.

It won the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Play and an Olivier Award for Best New Play. Audiences from London to New York were devastated by the moment Oliver declines Helen's offer on stage.

Pitmen vs Lowry — The Key Difference

People often compare the Ashington Group to L.S. Lowry. But the difference is fundamental: Lowry was an outsider looking in. The Pitmen Painters were insiders. They lived the life they painted. They went down the pit at six in the morning and picked up brushes in the evening. That authenticity — that coal dust under the paint — is what makes their work extraordinary.

Explore Further

From under tables and piles of clutter came "pictures of pit and pit village, pictures of hewing and shifting, joinery and smithying, pictures of washing, baking and rug-making, pictures of football and whippet racing, pictures detailing an entire way of life." — William Feaver, Pitmen Painters: The Ashington Group 1934–1984

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