This book tells the true story of a group of miners who became celebrated and feted throughout the art-world and it also inspired the acclaimed play to be written  The Pitmen Painters by Tony Award winner Lee Hall. 
The Ashington Group began in the early 1930s as an evening class of Northumberland miners keen to learn about art. Within weeks they were producing their own work as an aid to art appreciation and within a few years their paintings amounted to a complete record of life in a North of England mining community. This was art without precedent, unique for its collective ideals and individual expression, covering everything from clocking in and working at the coalface to street life, home life and off-shift recreations. Over many years, through war and post-war reconstruction, they went on recording their lives, preserving the paintings they considered their best to form a permanent collection. William Feaver tells the story of these ‘unprofessional painters’, as they were termed, setting their work in the context of Ashington and of art history, illustrating his book with paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture by the Group as well as with archive photographs.

.

 ‘After seeing the play on Broadway, I was very interested in the book of the Pitmen Painters. It is a remarkable story, play and event in history.’ T. Agg

‘By the time I’d read the first chapter, I knew I had to write a play about these extraordinary men.’ Lee Hall 

Back to William Feaver