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 in April.
Renowned for his evocative images of the working lives of miners in northeastern Britain, Cornish was the most famous of a group that came to be known as pit painters. In 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 “Bar Scene,” depicting miners in caps sitting hunched at a tavern, the Bowes Museum said in a statement. The painting — a loan from the Durham County Council — curiously had a backboard set into the frame, and the work had been stretched over a picture frame, Old said in 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 on 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 or 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 “Bar Scene” was acquired by the Durham Council in 1961, Sturrs said, which meant the self-portrait had gone undetected for over 60 years.
Describing the work as “remarkable,” Amanda Hopgood, leader of the Durham Council, said in a statement that “It makes a fantastic addition to the wonderful body of work that Norman Cornish is known for.”
It is unclear when exactly the discovery was created, the museum said. Painted on a used canvas, the self-portrait shows Cornish in his younger years with a thoughtful gaze. It is the 29th self-portrait in the artist’s body of work, according to the museum.
The challenge, Sturrs said, was to display the new work and “Bar 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 in the small mining town of Spennymoor in Durham County in 1919 and began working in mines at the age of 14. When he turned 15, he joined a social institute that became a breeding ground for creative talent known as the Pitman’s Academy.
In 1966, he left the mines and went on to establish himself as one of the most sought-after British artists of the 20th century. He died in 2014.
Sturrs described Cornish’s works as warm and intimate, highlighting the claustrophobia, darkness and sacrifice of miners’ lives.
“There is an intimacy in his stroke and mark that you cannot help but get swept away,” she said.