Will the work of Durham artist Norman Cornish pass the test of time?

The book presents unseen and rare images by Norman Cornish, as well as his popular works like a Busy Bar, and features essays by people like Melvyn Bragg, Michael Chaplin, Pam Royle and Gillian Wales and Robert McManners who ask if his work will pass the test of time.

The book is launched with events on Wednesday and Thursday in Spennymoor and Bishop Auckland in which playwright and TV producer Chaplin will lead discussions about ten of Cornish’s favourite works.

But first, in an excerpt from the prologue of the book, Mike and Ann Thornton, Norman’s son-in-law and daughter, tell a little about his life and work and what the book, The Test of Time, is trying to achieve…

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Busy Bar, by Norman Cornish - we love the froth on the top of the beers and the warm glow of camraderie that bathes the bar and the cloth-capped drinkers

THERE are few people who would fail to instantly recognise the work of Norman Cornish. Often described as a master of the informal portrait and the unguarded moment, his evocative paintings and drawings provide an unrivalled social record of an important era in English history from the 1930s to the early 1970s.

His observations of people and places are a window into a world which to a large extent ow no longer exists, but which he has immortalised for us all with its struggle, its beauty and its dignity.

Cornish was born in 1919 in Spennymoor in a house with no bathroom or inside toilet. He shared a room with his five brothers and one sister. He described living conditions as “primitive” and he contracted diphtheria when he was seven. There was very little reading material at home.

His journey from miner to professional artist is a story of great determination and resilience to overcome hardship and prejudice. Cornish belonged to a generation denied the opportunity of continuing with education, and he saw working from an early age as a duty to support his immediate family. Working class artists were deemed to be “Sunday painters”, and they were looked down upon by the arts establishment because of their occupation, as well as their implied political associations.

Self portrait of the artist as a young man. All images with today's article are taken from the new book, Norman Cornish: The Test of Time

Cornish was denied a place at The Slade School of Art in 1939 by the impending war, and when he worked at Sunderland Art College in 1967 he was resented by some students and several of his contemporaries because he lacked an academic background.

His modest income as a miner in Spennymoor was a constraint upon him buying artistic materials, and a further dilemma existed between his interest in art and aesthetics and the hazards of working and surviving underground. Conditions for all miners were appalling with a constant risk of death or serious injury. These traumatic experiences inevitably impacted upon his work and the interpretation of his subjects.

Despite these obstacles, a rare talent emerged in the post war years and his reputation grew.

Dene Bridge Row in Chilton by Norman Cornish, with the washing billowing in the breeze

He was a member of the Spennymoor Settlement Sketching Club, which held its own annual exhibitions locally but progressed to regional exhibitions at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle, which was regarded as the ‘Royal Academy of the North’. The Settlement’s other men of modest means who were later to achieve national success included writer Sid Chaplin, newspaper editor Arnold Hadwin and artist Tom McGuinness.

In 1947, Cornish was invited to join an exhibition entitled Art By The Miner at The Academy Cinema, Oxford Street, in London, which coincided with his first live BBC broadcast from Alexandra Palace.

In Carlisle in 1951, he was included in an exhibition of “Northern realists” which featured contemporaries such as Victor Pasmore, Theodore Major, LS Lowry and Ned Owen.

Part of the attraction of Norman Cornish's work is the way he chronicled life as it was back then. Using his family as inspiration, he depicted their daily life: darning socks, scrubbing the front doorstep or bathing the bairns in the tin bath that every mining home used to have in front of the fire. Below, his wife, Sarah scrubs the carpet in their Spennymoor home

But this burgeoning reputation placed further pressure upon him as he weighed up giving up the assured income of a miner, upon which his family relied upon, with the gamble of throwing it in and becoming a full time artist.

In 1966, having just produced the iconic panorama of the Durham Miners’ Gala for the new County Hall, he took the gamble. He was supported throughout by his wife Sarah, and, with the help of his agents at the Stone Gallery in Newcastle, the gamble paid off. Even academia embraced him, with honorary awards from the universities of Newcastle (1974), Northumbria (1995) and Sunderland (2012).

He finally stopped painting in 2012, so he worked for more years as a professional artist than he did as a miner underground, a fact often overlooked.

There are many pictures in the new book that Memories had not seen before, like this one, A Good Drying Day in Spennymoor in the 1950s, with the mother and her pram caught up in a sheet. This comes from the days when poss tubs were still in use in most homes and handwashing was the norm with a "blue bag" placed in the warm water to make the whites wash whiter

He died in 2014, aged 94, and his centenary year in 2019 was commemorated by seven exhibitions across the North East. More than 87,000 visitors came from all parts of the UK to enjoy and appreciate his work. The apogee of the celebrations was the exhibition at the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle where previous attendance records were broken with 53,000 visitors, despite the pandemic.

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There is an authenticity to Cornish’s work which spans his era. He became an anchor point in the arts community, building on social realism without shifting towards abstraction and decoration.

Behind The Scenes: The Norman Cornish Sketchbooks was published in 2017 and revealed his detailed creative process.

Cornish's view of the Miners' Gala which was produced for the new County Hall at Aykley Heads is now one of the icons of County Durham. It has recently been moved to Bishop Auckland Town Hall. This is his view of the Big Meeting in 1947, 15 years earlier, with the cathedral in the background and the warm, clothed capped faces of the miners in the foreground

The new book, The Test of Time, collates the stories behind the pictures, the legacy projects, and a collection of informed comments from nationally respected arts and cultural specialists who have known and enjoyed Cornish’s work throughout their own lifetimes.

Visitor comments at exhibitions express deepening and strengthening emotional attachment to his work which helps us to take pride in our own sense of place, belonging and identity and it opens the door to the very heart of our heritage and culture.

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For more than 50 years, we spent many hours in conversation with Norman, listening as he shared highlights of his life and work. He gave us a special insight to a treasure trove of historical moments and anecdotes, and the stories behind his works provide unrivalled access to a slice of art history.

The Northern Echo was important to Norman. He read the paper daily, beginning every day with the crossword, and then re-using it for rough sketches when inspiration struck. This is St Paul's Church in Spennymoor sketched on an Echo racing page

During the preparations for the exhibition at the Bowes in November 2020, a BBC Radio 4 Today interviewer asked Associate Professor Jean Brown, of Northumbria University: “Will his work stand the test of time?”

She replied: “Absolutely – because he is up there with Rembrandt, Degas and Lautrec.”

Chris Lloyd, who compiles Memories, is one of the essayists in the new book, including writing about Funky Truman, who sold papers outside the Mitre pub in Bishop Auckland. Tab in his mouth, you can hear his strangulated cry: "'Spatch" in the evening and the cock crow of "e-CO" in the morning - an acoustic welcome to the day tha modern, screenbound, scrolling people no longer hear

Norman Cornish: The Test of Time is officially published on Friday, October 13, at £30. It will be on sale at Spennymoor Town Hall, the Bishop Auckland Mining Art Gallery and the Bowes Museum, as well as at normancornish.com

It will be available at an early bird price at the launch events, on Wednesday in Spennymoor Town Hall (01388-815276) and Thursday in Bishop Auckland Town Hall (0300-0269524). Both events start at 7pm and tickets cost £5.

The cover of the new book

Norman Cornish seems to have liked snowfalls because they allowed him to see his favourite streetscenes in a new light. This is Half Moon Lane in Spennymoor when there was a corner shop, selling The Northern Echo, next to a Methodist chapel and the Victoria pub. Now only the chapel remains. Below: The Google StreetView image of the same street

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Kids playing on an old railway line

In November 1934, Norman watched a crowd of 100 men outside Spennymoor Post Office waiting for the score of an FA Cup match between the Moors and Rotherham United to be telegraphed through. These were the days when there were football grounds behind tall brick walls in the middle of their communities - not in gleaming out-of-town spaceship stadiums. This is a sketch of Gateshead United's old Redheugh Park with an advert for a bigger forthcoming match