The Pitmen Painters

The story of the Ashington Group who used art as a means of self-discovery and self-help - a group of Northumberland pitmen who started to paint to learn something of how pictures were made and in so doing, produced an account of a community in painting and sculpture which is considered to be without equal or rival. They depicted such subjects as clocking in, work on the coalface, the pithead baths, Saturday night at the club, the corner shop, race track, pigeon crees and football games. William Feaver the author, is trustee of their work, and establishes this "unprofessional" painting in the context of mining life and art history, illustrating the book with paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture by the Group as well as with archive photographs. He is also author of "The art of John Martin" (Oxford University Press), "When we were young" (Thames & Hudson) and "Masters of Circumstance" (Weidenfeld). He is art critic of "The Observer".