Son of a painter and decorator, First World War veteran Harry Wilson trained as a dental mechanic in Newcastle before moving to Ashington in 1926. With no links to the community, he enrolled in the local branch of the Workers Educational Association (WEA) to make connections and find new hobbies outside of work. Within a year he was elected to its committee and over the next decade he became a highly involved member who did much to promote the organisation in Ashington, despite often having to contend with poor funds, low membership, and political antagonism from outside parties.

In 1934, Wilson was president of the WEA and, in an effort to bring in new members, he and the rest of the committee organised three new courses that year: Art Appreciation, Music Appreciation, and Philosophy. He himself attended the Art Appreciation course, which proved to be an unprecedented success, and despite having little prior interest in art, he became an accomplished painter and sculptor under Robert Lyon’s tutelage. Wilson never worked at the collieries; his paintings focused more on highlighting social issues that he witnessed in North Seaton during his door-to-door work as an insurance salesman, a job that he took in part because it provided him greater inspiration for his art than his previous employment in a dental office. During the Second World War, he distributed identity cards for the National Registry (as depicted in his painting Registration) and served as a Captain in the Home Guard.

After George Brown’s death in 1963, Wilson inherited presidency of the Group and rekindled the educational spirit of their WEA years by organising evening art classes at the Ashington Technical College. Wilson retired from a thirty-year career in insurance in 1968, allowing him to dedicate more time to Group activities. He was also able to enjoy the resurgence of national interest in their work, appearing prominently in the BBC documentary Pigeons and Paint which was produced just before his death at the age of seventy-four.

Text from Museums Northumberland website

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Wallington Hall, Northumberland
Material: Oil on board
Artist: Harry Parkinson Wilson (1898 – 1972)
Date: unknown

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: 1/33s
ISO: 400
Licensing: Image of a North East Museums asset. © The Ashington Group Trustees. This image cannot be licensed.

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.

Born on Christmas Day of 1898, Jimmy Floyd came from a family of Devon miners who emigrated to Northumberland via Yorkshire to work in the northern coalfields. Starting as a trapper at the Ashington Colliery at the age of fourteen, he would eventually spend the majority of his mining career as an onsetter, responsible for loading coal tubs onto the ‘cage’ which ascended the pit shaft to the pit head. Interested in drawing since his youth, Floyd joined the WEA course on Art Appreciation in 1934 and, along with Oliver Kilbourn, he was one of the few members of the Ashington Group who worked underground every day, therefore able to give accurate insight into the conditions at the coalface.

A regular and conscientious contributor to the Group, Floyd formed part of their core membership, and his paintings made up significant parts of their exhibitions, ranging from self-reflective works examining his own career (Trapping, My First Job and The Onsetter) to the pleasures of allotment life (Pigeon Crees). After his retirement from the pits, his focus shifted largely to colourful scenes of fairgrounds, travellers’ camps, and country landscapes, often painting many copies of the same compositions so that he could give them away to friends and family as seasonal gifts.

Floyd wrote regularly to the Ashington Group’s longtime mentors Robert Lyon and Helen Sutherland after their main correspondent within the Group, Arthur Whinnom, died in 1962. As per George Brown and Jack Harrison, he also became a frequent entrant into the annual Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation (CISWO) arts competitions, winning several prizes in their painting and sculpting categories. Floyd was also honoured by the Morpeth Town Council in 1974 for his heroic efforts in rescuing an elderly miner from a burning building, just prior to his death at the age of seventy-five. He was, after Oliver Kilbourn, the second longest tenured member of the Ashington Group, consistently active for forty years.

Text from Museums Northumberland website

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Wallington Hall, Northumberland
Material: Oil on board
Artist: Jimmy Floyd (1898 – 1974)
Date: circa 1939

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: 1/25s
ISO: 400
Licensing: Image of a North East Museums asset. © The Ashington Group Trustees. This image cannot be licensed.