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38 of 39 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a great piece of writing on the history of art and it's also a very readable social history. Right up to the Second World War miners in the north-east were still using pit-ponies and candles underground. Life was harsh and the paintings show this; but they also show things that make life worth living - whippets, gardens, people. The Ashington Group were amateur painters, not Da Vinci, but William Feaver is never patronising. He gives an honest, critical analysis of the paintings and their place in our culture.
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
My mum always has had yearning to go to see the Pitmen Painters play in London. Prior to getting tickets I thought it would be a good idea to get as much info as I could before she went up. This book is superb. It captures the true sence of time, location and social history. These were working class miners who took up a hobby that was to enrich what was on the surface a hard , dour life. You can feel the joy and pride these men felt through their paintings showing what it meant to live and work in what was on the surface an unforgiving environment.
31 of 32 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is the real life story behind The Pitmen Painters, the new play by Lee Hall, creator of Billy Elliot. (Which was a well-deserved sell-out at London's National Theatre in 2008.)
The Ashington Group began in 1934 as an evening class of Northumberland pitmen keen to learn about art, whose enthusiasm and hunger for knowledge led to them becoming well-respected artists in their own right.
Could it happen today? ... probably not, in this age of dumbing-down when the ordinary working man has been stupefied on a diet of lowest-common denominator TV shows.
What makes this book particularly fascinating is that, as a young art teacher in the 1970s, the author William Feaver came into contact with surviving members of the Group - who spring from the pages just as vividly as the characters in Lee Hall's play. Incidentally, their paintings of pit village life can be seen at Woodhorn Colliery Museum, Northumberland.
The Ashington Group began in 1934 as an evening class of Northumberland pitmen keen to learn about art, whose enthusiasm and hunger for knowledge led to them becoming well-respected artists in their own right.
Could it happen today? ... probably not, in this age of dumbing-down when the ordinary working man has been stupefied on a diet of lowest-common denominator TV shows.
What makes this book particularly fascinating is that, as a young art teacher in the 1970s, the author William Feaver came into contact with surviving members of the Group - who spring from the pages just as vividly as the characters in Lee Hall's play. Incidentally, their paintings of pit village life can be seen at Woodhorn Colliery Museum, Northumberland.
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