Ashington coal miners by day, fine artists by night: The origins of the Pitmen Painters

Tom Barton visited Woodhorn Museum in Northumberland where an exhibition is celebrating a group of miners who shot to global fame for their incredible depictions of daily life and work

Ninety years after they first started painting, the work of the Pitmen Painters is as compelling now as it has ever been.

The group of miners from Ashington, in Northumberland, documented life and work through art with a unique perspective and became an international sensation.

Now an exhibition at the town's Woodhorn Museum is celebrating their achievements, bringing together unseen works and telling the story of their accidental success.

Dr Narbi Price is recognised as one of the foremost experts in the group's work and told ITV Tyne Tees there is no other collective like them.

"I think the real focus of the Ashington Group had this singular thing that they were doing for 50 years," he said. "And that's a unique thing.

"They were documenting their lives. And there's nothing like this in art history. There's nothing like it from the point of view of painters, and there's nothing like it from that sort of idea of authorship.

"They were there living their life, living this lived experience and communicating it very directly through their work for that sheer length of time - 50 years - which is an incredibly valuable thing."

In its heyday, Ashington was known as the world's largest pit village. It was a town where nearly every man worked in the coal mines.

In a town this big, you might occasionally come across a single artistic genius, but the fact that there were so many men with so much talent born here could be credited to one man in particular.

That man was Robert Lyon who was employed by the Workers' Educational Association to teach an evening class in art appreciation.

Jessica Cole, from Woodhorn Museum, said one of the exhibits on show at the museum is a projector and a box of slides which Robert Lyon carried on the train from Newcastle to Ashington to show the miners.

But the men were not as receptive to his art lecture as he had expected, so he changed tack - moving from teaching the miners about art to teaching them to create it.

She said: "He quickly realised within a few sessions that that approach wasn't going to work with this group of men. And that's when he decided he would teach an appreciation of art through doing rather than looking."

This was a success and, soon enough, the men were unintentionally creating what would become an internationally acclaimed collection of work.

"They didn't do that with the intention to project it out to the world, they were just doing it for their own enjoyment," she continued.

"That premise really just took them through for the entire five decades that they continued to meet as a group. I think if they knew today the relevance and the continuation of the appreciation of them as a group, they'd be astounded."

The exhibition, Coalface Drawers, marks the end of Woodhorn Museum's year-long programme celebrating 90 years of the Pitmen Painters.

Dr Price, who curated the exhibition, said it is both the story and work of this group of men that has led to their lasting imprint on art and social history.

He continued: "The story is always important but the thing that really ties everything back is the quality of the work, and the focus and the attention to detail that the men had in making their work."

Coalface Drawers will be on until Sunday 5 January.

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