RSS

Contact us

Thursday 4 December 2008

‘Seeing by doing’

William Feaver explains how his book ‘Pitmen Painters’ inspired a new play at the National

Dusted down, the paintings were quite something. Many were plain naive; others were not unrelated to Stanley Spencer or to Paul or John Nash, or Cézanne even. There was a warmth of endeavour, an eagerness to record a world rarely, if ever, penetrated by professional painters, or photographers. Jimmy Floyd brought out his ‘Bait Time’, showing a pony nosing a bite to eat from the putter lad, its co-worker. Fred Laidler, a colliery joiner, showed me a picture he had done of a dead pony brought to the surface in a tub: a sight, he said, that had never been recorded.

Oliver Kilbourn, quiet-spoken with a dense Ashington drawl, told me that ‘personal experience’ hadn’t been the point, initially. They had begun to paint, back in the Thirties, only in order to appreciate other art. But painting had become a passion. ‘A funny thing, once you’ve painted a picture, you feel it’s part of your life, you know.’

‘Knaaing what to de’; ‘knowing what to do.’

At the beginning, autumn 1934, they hadn’t a clue. Jimmy Floyd wasn’t there at the first meeting of the Workers Educational Association Art Appreciation class in the Ashington YMCA hut, nor Oliver Kilbourn (he was on back shift), and Fred Laidler didn’t join until ten years later. The first few weeks were useless anyway. The tutor assigned to them, Robert Lyon, Master of Painting at Armstrong College, Newcastle, tried slides of Michelangelo, etc. on them but failed to impress. Flummoxed, and anxious that the class might be cancelled, he brought in a couple of his own students (listing them as ‘unemployed’) to keep the numbers up. But then it struck him that, given their lack of artistic awareness, perhaps he could turn this sort of innocence to advantage. What if he set them practical exercises to do? These were men confident, presumably, when working with their hands: let them do lino-cuts.

It was a start. The lino-cutting, however, soon gave way to painting, using walpamur mainly on bits of cardboard or ply and, since the paintings were done only to serve as items for discussion, there was no preciousness to them. Delighted by the enthusiasm he had inspired, Lyon proceeded to spread the word about this ‘seeing by doing’. Helen Sutherland, P&O heiress and an idealist patron of the arts, who lived at Rock Hall quite near Ashington, invited the class over for tea. ‘In came this sensitive, eager, receptive group of men,’ she wrote. ‘A long procession it seemed, with beautiful, natural, but ceremonious manners. We looked at pictures; we had some music and immense talk and tea!’

More articles from: William Feaver | this section

Print this article  |  Email to a friend  |  Permalink  |   Comment

Post this entry to:   del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Advertisement

Spectator Business | Apollo Magazine

Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms

Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP

All Articles and Content Copyright ©2008 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved