Son of a colliery stableman in Woodhorn, Andrew Rankin and his brothers were all employed as timekeepers on the clerical staff of the Ashington Coal Company, responsible for recording the miners’ daily shifts, later being promoted to a billing accountant for outgoing coal shipments. In his free time, he was involved with the St John Ambulance Brigade alongside Edward Hedley, a colleague on the colliery accounting team who was studying art under Robert Lyon at Armstrong College. When Lyon held his first Ashington lecture on Art Appreciation for the WEA on 29 October 1934, Rankin was among the thirteen men who attended, establishing what would become the Ashington Group.

Lyon described in his writings on the Ashington Group how Rankin – more prolific as a sculptor than a painter – would regularly keep an ongoing sculpture in his pocket, finding time to carve it using a penknife or piece of broken glass during his lunch breaks at work. These small, figurative pieces became staples of early Ashington Group exhibitions, in addition to his occasional paintings of scenes from the surface buildings of the collieries, including In the Canteen and Pit Accident. One of Rankin’s last artistic achievements with the Group was the sale of his painting Miner’s Bath to the art collector Arthur Jeffress, displayed as part of his Sunday Painters exhibition at the Hanover Gallery in London at the end of 1948.

Despite the national success of the Ashington Group, Rankin found little encouragement from his wife Janet, and he rarely discussed his art with his family. By the 1950s, his direct contribution to the Group had effectively ceased, though he remained a casual member of their circle until he died of cancer at the age of sixty.

Text from Museums Northumberland website

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Wallington Hall, Northumberland
Material: Oil on board
Artist: Andrew Rankin (1900–1961)
Date: circa 1935

Image Details
Date: 10 September 2023
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/50s
ISO: 250
Licensing: Image of a North East Museums asset. © The Ashington Group Trustees. This image cannot be licensed.