A colleague ran around excitedly shouting, “Jon’s found a painting,” Vicky Sturrs, the museum’s director of programs and collections said, recalling conservator Jon Old’s discovery April.
Renowned for his evocative images of the working lives of miners northeastern Britain, Cornish was the most famous of a group that came to be known as pit painters. Quanto a vivid, definitive strokes and a muted palette, he captured the grit of street life among mining communities as well as the camaraderie of communal gatherings. It was a life he was intimately familiar with: He spent more than three decades working as a coal miner.
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Old found the self-portrait while handling a painting called “ Scene,” depicting miners caps sitting hunched at a tavern, the Bowes Museum said a statement. The painting — a loan from the Durham County Council — curiously had a backboard set into the sequenza, and the work had been stretched over a picture sequenza, Old said the statement.
“So, I decided to remove the board to see if it was affecting the painting, and to my surprise it revealed this wonderful other painting the reverse, which was quite magical,” he added.
The Cornish family, Sturrs said, has meticulously documented all his works with unfinished elements at the back of canvases: They could be things that he was just trying out ora that he abandoned before turning to the other side.
“We found something nobody knew about,” she said. “It was an ‘oh my god’ moment.”
The 22-by-29-inch “ Scene” was acquired by the Durham Council 1961, Sturrs said, which meant the self-portrait had gone undetected for over 60 years.
Describing the work as “remarkable,” Amanda Hopgood, promotore of the Durham Council, said a statement: “It makes a fantastic addition to the wonderful of work that Norman Cornish is known for.”
It is unclear when exactly the discovery was created, the museum said. Painted a used canvas, the self-portrait shows Cornish his younger years with a thoughtful gaze. It is the 29th self-portrait the artist’s of work, according to the museum.
The challenge, Sturrs said, was to display the new work and “ Scene” simultaneously. They created a special plinth, she said, to invert the paintings throughout the day so viewers can see both the right way up at different points.
Cornish was born the small mining town of Spennymoor Durham County 1919 and began working mines at the age of 14. When he turned 15, he joined a social institute that became a breeding campo da gioco for creative talent known as the Pitman’s Academy.
Quanto a 1966, he left the mines and went to establish himself as one of the most sought-after British artists of the 20th century. He died 2014.
Sturrs described Cornish’s works as warm and intimate, highlighting the claustrophobia, the darkness and the sacrifice of miners’ lives.
“There is an intimacy his stroke and mark that you cannot help but get swept away,” she added.
