Interpreting
the art of Tom McGuinness
This is a
personal summary of the section of the book McGuinness:
Interpreting the art of Tom McGuiness that is entitled ‘Influences on the
art of Tom McGuinness’. The authors are
Robert McManners and Gillian Wales. The
book was published in 2006 by Gemini Productions. The book is dedicated to ‘The Bevin Boys –
especially Tom McGuinness’.
The sections
of the book are unnumbered and are as follows: Acknowledgements; Foreword;
Preface; Introduction; Influences on the art of Tom McGuiness; Development of
the characteristic McGuiness style; Epilogue; Plates; List of plates; List of
exhibitions; Glossary of art terms; Glossary of mining terms; Bibliography.
Wikipedia on
Tom McGuinness: ‘Tom McGuinness (1926-2006) was a British coal miner and artist. He
studied at the Darlington School of Art, and was one of the artists at the Spennymoor
Settlement,
where his contemporaries included Norman Cornish, Herbert Dees and Robert Heslop’.
Interpreting the art of Tom McGuinness
Coal
Coal mining
was unique among the heavy industries that dominated North East England in the
19th and 20th Century: it was both the source of power
for all other industries and it was a complete way of life in itself. This way of life included ‘a corpus of
experiential art’. Painters of coal
mining subjects included both members of the mining community and artists from
outside that community. Tom McGuinness
is the supreme exponent of coal mining art.
McGuinness
painted from direct personal experience of coal mining in County Durham. Much of the content of his many sketch books
was drawn at the mine and down the mine.
These sketches were the origin of many of McGuinness’ paintings. This makes McGuinness unique among painters
of coal mining subjects.
McGuinness
worked in collieries until he was made redundant in 1983. At the end of his life he became a witness to
the end of coal mining in County Durham and its social aftermath.
Witton Park
McGuinness
was born in Witton Park in the year of the General Strike and the subsequent
Miners’ Strike. In the early 20th
Century Witton Park suffered high unemployment and great poverty. This arose from the sudden decline in
iron-making at Witton Park in the late 19th Century, due to
technological change. As McGuinness grew
up in Witton Park, he was more interested in the local environment than in
school work. Significant influences on
McGuinness are described as his childhood observation of the derelict landscape
and machinery, and his interest in human behaviour.
In 1940
McGuiness left school. In 1944 he was
conscripted under wartime regulations to work in coal mines as a ‘Bevin
Boy’. He had not wanted to be a miner. With mines in the Witton Park area closed he
had to travel elsewhere in County Durham to work. McGuinness considered that if he had not
worked in mining, art may have been less important to him.
Darlington
In 1944 McGuinness
enrolled at Darlington School of Art after being encouraged to do so by the
Colliery Training Officer. McGuiness
attended this art school for six years and studied life drawing, portraiture
and ‘antique drawing’. His art teacher,
Ralph Swinden, urged McGuinness to adopt a bold line in drawing and this was
remembered by McGuiness as significant.
McGuinness was self-taught in anatomical drawing. McGuinness travelled in the UK to see other
artists’ work in public galleries: Daumier’s lithographs particularly inspired
him. He collected reproductions of
artists and was particularly influenced by the works of Rembrandt, Durer and
Goya, as well as Daumier.
In 1947 coal
mines were nationalised. Many Bevin Boys
left the industry, including McGuinness who took up other work, but he soon
returned to coal mining.
Spennymoor
In 1948
McGuinness enrolled in the Sketching Club at the Spennymoor Settlement – an
educational and recreational organisation that had been established in 1931 to
help to alleviate the effects of the Great Depression. This is where McGuinness met other ‘pitman
artists’ including Norman Cornish.
Cornish and McGuinness became close friends. McGuinness was inspired by the Spennymoor
Settlement in the same way that Cornish had been when he joined in the
1930s.
Bill Farrell
– the first warden of the Settlement – advised both men to ‘paint what they
knew’. There was no tuition: the
Sketching Club worked together by peer support and shared problem solving. Farrell insisted that all work be drawn from
life. This led McGuinness to draw and
paint directly from his working environment.
Farrell also insisted that only the best materials should be used.
At this time
McGuinness began to rent an attic room at a boarding house in Bishop Auckland,
to use as his studio.
McGuinness
attended the Spennymoor Settlement until 1951 when he returned to art classes
in Darlington: this is when he produced his first oil paintings.
Durham University
In 1956
McGuinness met Gill Harman (later Holloway) who was art tutor at Durham
University Extra-Mural Department. Gill
taught many artists from North East England who later had succesful
careers. Gill advocated study of art
history alongside the practise of painting.
In 1958
McGuinness had his first solo exhibition, at the Coal Industry Social Welfare
Organisation in Hobart House, London. Subsequently
Gill Harman arranged that a room at the City Hotel in Durham could be used as a
gallery: many artists’ works were shown here and the gallery was an artists’
meeting place.
Newcastle upon Tyne
In 1969 an
exhibition was held at The Stone Gallery in St.Mary’s Place, Newcastle upon
Tyne, showing the work of McGuinness, Cornish and Josef Herman – a Polish
artist who had painted in the Welsh Coalfield ‘in an expressionist manner’. On 30th
November 1969 Bill Johnson – art critic of the Manchester Guardian – reviewed
the show and concluded that Herman’s work was inferior to that of the two
Northeasterners.
London
In the early
1970s McGuinness was commissioned to work for three years under the patronage
of Lady Hirshfield – a Labour peer in the first Wilson government. This led to McGuinness’ work being known
nationally, and London exhibitions were held, with many sales taking place. McGuinness continued to work as a miner. He saw himself as a ‘miner who could paint’
and not as ‘an artist who was trapped in the stony grasp of the coalmine’. In 1972 Lord Hirshfield encouraged McGuinness
to broaden his subject range to include more above ground scenes ‘in brighter
colours’ so as to be ‘more commercially acceptable to the London market’. Having produced a number of beach scenes,
McGuinness did not take the experiment further.
In 1974 the patronage ended.
Durham
At this time
McGuinness was featured in the National Coal Board’s ‘Mining Review’ news film
and in a BBC ‘Omnibus’ documentary, and this led to a valuable commission in
1976 from Barclays Bank. The resulting
work – a painting entitled ‘The Miners’ Gala’ – hangs in the Market Place
branch of the bank in Durham.
In 1978
McGuinness organised his own show of seventy of his works in London. This was successful. It led to an exhibition of works by artists
of Northern England in Moscow in the early 1990s, including works by McGuinness.
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