Art, Iron and Steel
An iron and steel works with its subsidiary workshops is indeed the paradise of the modern artist, for it contains cubes, cylinders, parallel rails, cones, cranes, furnaces, and squat machines of enormous strength. The glow of the fires of the furnaces, and of the slag-tips when a ladle of molten-slag is hurled down the sides, illuminates the sky at night, a provides a landmark for miles around. By day, a pall of smoke arises and drifts along to the sea; there is, perhaps, something macabre , something of an inferno, in the spectacle. But the minute control of gigantic machines, the ordered yet swift activities of the workmen, the irresistible purposefulness behind the whole organisation, present a spectacle that cannot be forgotten. There is a beauty in it all, unless the vision of the spectator is deficient.
From A Romance of Industry, Bolckow, Vaughan and Co,, London. 1928
Reflecting on Heritage
I first started to give serious thought to connections between art and the steel industry when at the Shafts of Light: Mining Art in the Great Northern Coalfield exhibition that was showing at the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle from May to September 2014. That exhibition featured paintings, sculpture and banners relating to the coalmining industry. It led me to reflecting on the huge amount of art that I had encountered relating to that industry and the communities that surrounded it, in contrast to the apparent dearth of it relating to iron and steel making. I wondered whether there had been a creative deficit within steelmaking communities, whether it was really a marketing deficit or whether something had been happening that I had failed to notice.
This led me on a journey. In a sense, it was an exploration of identity – my own. My origins are in both coalmining and steelmaking communities: more so in the steelmaking one because that was the one into which I was born, and in which I grew up. I lived in Grangetown, near Middlesbrough, until moving the short distance to South Bank when I was eleven. I began my working life in the steel industry when I was fifteen but left it when I was thirty. All four of my paternal great-grandparents were Irish immigrants. The men came to work in the iron industry – initially in South Wales but finishing up on Teesside – and the women came with them, looked after them and raised the next generations of steelworkers. My father gave his life to the industry: a bundle of steel joists that he was loading onto a lorry fell on top of him and killed him when he was only forty-six.
My maternal grandfather was a miner in the Durham coalfield. All of my mother’s grandfathers and great-grandfathers worked down the pit, and so did her two brothers. Her youngest brother – my uncle – died with black-lung disease when only in his thirties. With my family record, in both industries, there is no way I can feel romantic about them. They have been hard, dirty and dangerous places in which to work. During my time in the steel industry, working as a Fitter, I had colleagues that lost their lives while doing jobs that I had done myself on many occasions. Nevertheless, I can certainly understand the pride felt by those who have worked in both industries and the loss they feel as the industry hovers on the brink of potential dissolution. .
While at the Shafts of Light exhibition, I began to reflect on how my coalmining heritage seemed well documented in the arts: painting, sculpture, literature, poetry, folk song etc. The tradition is particularly strong in the visual arts, due, primarily, to the work of the Ashington Group (1934 – 84) possibly better known as the Pitmen Painters, and graduates of the Spennymoor Settlement such as Tom McGuiness and Norman Cornish. They are only the tip of the iceberg however. There have been many more, and not just in the northern coalfield, as has been shown by McManners and Wales in their Shafts of Light book. In that book, they express surprise that the heavy industries, apart from coal, do ‘not have a substantial body of art associated with them although they have been ‘comprehensively photographed.’ They are particularly mystified at the absence of a large body of work devoted to the iron and steel industry since in their view:
‘The visual attractions to the artist of the industrial process involved are undeniable. The massive construction of the furnaces and the vivid light source from within the scene starkly silhouetting the foreground figures are rich components for artistic interpretation and powerful composition.’
I wanted to know more about visual art representations of the iron and steel industry, so started to look for it. My first port-of-call was the BBC Your Paintings (now Art UK) web site, which purports to contain all of the oil paintings in the collections of state-owned institutions – that is all of the oil paintings that the British public own. My first interest was in the collections held within Teesside. I perused all of the oil paintings held by galleries and museums within the boroughs of Middlesbrough, Stockton, Hartlepool, and Redcar and Cleveland. Out of the nine-hundred plus paintings held by them, I found only eleven that depicted the iron and steel industries. I did, however, come across three oil paintings of Teesside steelworks that are currently located elsewhere: Ayresome Ironworks, Middlesbrough, which is owned by the Beamish Museum; Ironworks Middlesbrough, owned the Tate Gallery; and Cargo Fleet Ironworks, which is in the possession of the William Morris Gallery in London.
I was somewhat surprised at finding so few oil paintings of the steel industry in the possession of museums and galleries in the Teesside area, in which the iron and steel industry has played such a crucial part. Middlesbrough was one the most important iron producing areas in the world. It barely existed until the discovery of iron ore in the nearby hills in the 1850s but grew rapidly to become what William Gladstone, who served twelve years as UK Prime Minister but was Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, described as ‘an infant Hercules’ when he visited the town in 1862. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Bolckow and Vaughan Company was possibly the most important company in the world.
The apparent shortage of paintings of the iron and steel industry – even in area where it has been so important – may simply be due to the subject not attracting artists to depict it or lack of demand from patrons of the arts. Maybe people wanted something on their walls that took their attention away from the industry that was growing around them. In his study of Art and the Industrial Revolution, Francis D. Klingender suggests that a ‘new standard of values established by the triumphant capitalists’ negatively affected English painting, so that
‘Accustomed to the common level of the marketplace, they often lacked all appreciation of qualities that did not immediately suggest costliness. Minutely detailed copies of commonplace objects, either very large or very small (for both required enormous amounts of painstaking labour), banal sentiment, and heavy gold frames satisfied the normal taste of the newly rich, and their older landed partners in the ruling class often followed their example in this and in most other things. The painters, such were the financial inducements, became purveyors of the patron’s tastes, caterers in fact.’
As far as the public were concerned, the observations of Lorie A. Annarella regarding neglect of industrial art in western Pennsylvania seem apposite here – if one substitutes Middlesbrough for Pittsburgh and Teesside for western Pennsylvania. She purports that
‘Industrial art has not always been valued by all who lived and worked in the Pittsburgh area. Many thought that the steel mills would always be a vital part of the western Pennsylvanian landscape as well as its economy. Nor was industrial art always valued as an appropriate aesthetic expression of the industry during the decades when the steel mills were operating at maximum capacity. Few people wanted to see the making of iron and steel depicted on their walls at home, when the giant mills already defined the parameters of their lives. As for those who worked in the mills, not everyone wanted to be reminded of the mill when they came home and escaped from the hot, rough and dirty work place. Consequently, many people who laboured in the mills considered any painting or photographic work done of an industrial scene to be a grim reminder of the workplace.’
This makes sense to me. When I was working in the steelworks the last thing I wanted on my wall at home was a picture of the industry, but now things have changed. I no longer work in the industry – few people do – and a working steel industry no longer dominates my local landscape in the way that it used to do. Industrial art now holds a different attraction to me: it represents my heritage.
I have extended my search for paintings beyond Teesside to the rest of the UK: first through the Your Paintings web site and then to web-based archives made available by museums, art galleries and other public institutions. Through this, I have been able to locate around 300 oil paintings, watercolours, drawings and engravings with an iron and steel industry theme. It may sound a lot but it is an extremely small proportion of all the paintings in public collections. There can be no doubt that the art of steel has been neglected by those charged with putting public collections together. The number on this site would be higher if I had included portraits of ironmasters but they hold no particular interest for me. The people of the UK own the 300 paintings but few of the public ever see most of them, since they are locked away in archives. While searching for paintings, I have come across references to the steel industry in poetry, prose, film and song, although – and this point continually needs to be emphasised – nowhere near as much as what I know exists in relation to coalmining. As this site develops, I intend to include some of the poetry I have happened across during my research.
I am conscious that the pictures that I have found are by no means all of the paintings of iron and steel manufacture that are in public ownership: I have been dependent on those progressive institutions that have made their archives available on the internet. There will, of course, be many more paintings in private ownership but we do not have the right to see them. What I have attempted to put together here is a rough guide to where one can see steelworks paintings. Although many of them will not always be on display, one can always ask to see them when visited the museums and galleries that house them.
Although the art of steel has not been a significant priority for those that have developed our public collections of art over the years, I hope this site demonstrates that there is sufficient material in the archives of public museums and galleries throughout the UK for a major exhibition of art inspired by the steel industry. I am sure that an exhibition drawn from these artworks, most of which are languishing in museum archives, would arouse considerable public interest, especially in those parts of the UK and the rest of the world which have historical links with the iron and steel industries. I would also like to see a museum dedicated to industrial art, and as far as I am concerned it should be in Teesside..
References
Annarella, Lorie, A., Portraits of Industry: The Culture of Work in the Industrial Paintings of Howard L. Worner and Their Use in Arts Education. 2004. University Press of America.
Feaver, William, Pitmen Painters: the Ashington Group 1934–1984. 1988. Mid Northumberland Arts Group, Carcanet Press, 1993.
Hauser, Arnold, The Social History of Art. 1951. Routledge, 1999.
Klingender, Francis, D., Art and the Industrial Revolution. 1947. Granada Publishing Limited 1975.
McManners, Robert and Wales, Gillian, Shafts of Light. 2002, Gemini Productions.
You can visit the Art UK website by clicking here
An iron and steel works with its subsidiary workshops is indeed the paradise of the modern artist, for it contains cubes, cylinders, parallel rails, cones, cranes, furnaces, and squat machines of enormous strength. The glow of the fires of the furnaces, and of the slag-tips when a ladle of molten-slag is hurled down the sides, illuminates the sky at night, a provides a landmark for miles around. By day, a pall of smoke arises and drifts along to the sea; there is, perhaps, something macabre , something of an inferno, in the spectacle. But the minute control of gigantic machines, the ordered yet swift activities of the workmen, the irresistible purposefulness behind the whole organisation, present a spectacle that cannot be forgotten. There is a beauty in it all, unless the vision of the spectator is deficient.
From A Romance of Industry, Bolckow, Vaughan and Co,, London. 1928
Reflecting on Heritage
I first started to give serious thought to connections between art and the steel industry when at the Shafts of Light: Mining Art in the Great Northern Coalfield exhibition that was showing at the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle from May to September 2014. That exhibition featured paintings, sculpture and banners relating to the coalmining industry. It led me to reflecting on the huge amount of art that I had encountered relating to that industry and the communities that surrounded it, in contrast to the apparent dearth of it relating to iron and steel making. I wondered whether there had been a creative deficit within steelmaking communities, whether it was really a marketing deficit or whether something had been happening that I had failed to notice.
This led me on a journey. In a sense, it was an exploration of identity – my own. My origins are in both coalmining and steelmaking communities: more so in the steelmaking one because that was the one into which I was born, and in which I grew up. I lived in Grangetown, near Middlesbrough, until moving the short distance to South Bank when I was eleven. I began my working life in the steel industry when I was fifteen but left it when I was thirty. All four of my paternal great-grandparents were Irish immigrants. The men came to work in the iron industry – initially in South Wales but finishing up on Teesside – and the women came with them, looked after them and raised the next generations of steelworkers. My father gave his life to the industry: a bundle of steel joists that he was loading onto a lorry fell on top of him and killed him when he was only forty-six.
My maternal grandfather was a miner in the Durham coalfield. All of my mother’s grandfathers and great-grandfathers worked down the pit, and so did her two brothers. Her youngest brother – my uncle – died with black-lung disease when only in his thirties. With my family record, in both industries, there is no way I can feel romantic about them. They have been hard, dirty and dangerous places in which to work. During my time in the steel industry, working as a Fitter, I had colleagues that lost their lives while doing jobs that I had done myself on many occasions. Nevertheless, I can certainly understand the pride felt by those who have worked in both industries and the loss they feel as the industry hovers on the brink of potential dissolution. .
While at the Shafts of Light exhibition, I began to reflect on how my coalmining heritage seemed well documented in the arts: painting, sculpture, literature, poetry, folk song etc. The tradition is particularly strong in the visual arts, due, primarily, to the work of the Ashington Group (1934 – 84) possibly better known as the Pitmen Painters, and graduates of the Spennymoor Settlement such as Tom McGuiness and Norman Cornish. They are only the tip of the iceberg however. There have been many more, and not just in the northern coalfield, as has been shown by McManners and Wales in their Shafts of Light book. In that book, they express surprise that the heavy industries, apart from coal, do ‘not have a substantial body of art associated with them although they have been ‘comprehensively photographed.’ They are particularly mystified at the absence of a large body of work devoted to the iron and steel industry since in their view:
‘The visual attractions to the artist of the industrial process involved are undeniable. The massive construction of the furnaces and the vivid light source from within the scene starkly silhouetting the foreground figures are rich components for artistic interpretation and powerful composition.’
I wanted to know more about visual art representations of the iron and steel industry, so started to look for it. My first port-of-call was the BBC Your Paintings (now Art UK) web site, which purports to contain all of the oil paintings in the collections of state-owned institutions – that is all of the oil paintings that the British public own. My first interest was in the collections held within Teesside. I perused all of the oil paintings held by galleries and museums within the boroughs of Middlesbrough, Stockton, Hartlepool, and Redcar and Cleveland. Out of the nine-hundred plus paintings held by them, I found only eleven that depicted the iron and steel industries. I did, however, come across three oil paintings of Teesside steelworks that are currently located elsewhere: Ayresome Ironworks, Middlesbrough, which is owned by the Beamish Museum; Ironworks Middlesbrough, owned the Tate Gallery; and Cargo Fleet Ironworks, which is in the possession of the William Morris Gallery in London.
I was somewhat surprised at finding so few oil paintings of the steel industry in the possession of museums and galleries in the Teesside area, in which the iron and steel industry has played such a crucial part. Middlesbrough was one the most important iron producing areas in the world. It barely existed until the discovery of iron ore in the nearby hills in the 1850s but grew rapidly to become what William Gladstone, who served twelve years as UK Prime Minister but was Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, described as ‘an infant Hercules’ when he visited the town in 1862. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Bolckow and Vaughan Company was possibly the most important company in the world.
The apparent shortage of paintings of the iron and steel industry – even in area where it has been so important – may simply be due to the subject not attracting artists to depict it or lack of demand from patrons of the arts. Maybe people wanted something on their walls that took their attention away from the industry that was growing around them. In his study of Art and the Industrial Revolution, Francis D. Klingender suggests that a ‘new standard of values established by the triumphant capitalists’ negatively affected English painting, so that
‘Accustomed to the common level of the marketplace, they often lacked all appreciation of qualities that did not immediately suggest costliness. Minutely detailed copies of commonplace objects, either very large or very small (for both required enormous amounts of painstaking labour), banal sentiment, and heavy gold frames satisfied the normal taste of the newly rich, and their older landed partners in the ruling class often followed their example in this and in most other things. The painters, such were the financial inducements, became purveyors of the patron’s tastes, caterers in fact.’
As far as the public were concerned, the observations of Lorie A. Annarella regarding neglect of industrial art in western Pennsylvania seem apposite here – if one substitutes Middlesbrough for Pittsburgh and Teesside for western Pennsylvania. She purports that
‘Industrial art has not always been valued by all who lived and worked in the Pittsburgh area. Many thought that the steel mills would always be a vital part of the western Pennsylvanian landscape as well as its economy. Nor was industrial art always valued as an appropriate aesthetic expression of the industry during the decades when the steel mills were operating at maximum capacity. Few people wanted to see the making of iron and steel depicted on their walls at home, when the giant mills already defined the parameters of their lives. As for those who worked in the mills, not everyone wanted to be reminded of the mill when they came home and escaped from the hot, rough and dirty work place. Consequently, many people who laboured in the mills considered any painting or photographic work done of an industrial scene to be a grim reminder of the workplace.’
This makes sense to me. When I was working in the steelworks the last thing I wanted on my wall at home was a picture of the industry, but now things have changed. I no longer work in the industry – few people do – and a working steel industry no longer dominates my local landscape in the way that it used to do. Industrial art now holds a different attraction to me: it represents my heritage.
I have extended my search for paintings beyond Teesside to the rest of the UK: first through the Your Paintings web site and then to web-based archives made available by museums, art galleries and other public institutions. Through this, I have been able to locate around 300 oil paintings, watercolours, drawings and engravings with an iron and steel industry theme. It may sound a lot but it is an extremely small proportion of all the paintings in public collections. There can be no doubt that the art of steel has been neglected by those charged with putting public collections together. The number on this site would be higher if I had included portraits of ironmasters but they hold no particular interest for me. The people of the UK own the 300 paintings but few of the public ever see most of them, since they are locked away in archives. While searching for paintings, I have come across references to the steel industry in poetry, prose, film and song, although – and this point continually needs to be emphasised – nowhere near as much as what I know exists in relation to coalmining. As this site develops, I intend to include some of the poetry I have happened across during my research.
I am conscious that the pictures that I have found are by no means all of the paintings of iron and steel manufacture that are in public ownership: I have been dependent on those progressive institutions that have made their archives available on the internet. There will, of course, be many more paintings in private ownership but we do not have the right to see them. What I have attempted to put together here is a rough guide to where one can see steelworks paintings. Although many of them will not always be on display, one can always ask to see them when visited the museums and galleries that house them.
Although the art of steel has not been a significant priority for those that have developed our public collections of art over the years, I hope this site demonstrates that there is sufficient material in the archives of public museums and galleries throughout the UK for a major exhibition of art inspired by the steel industry. I am sure that an exhibition drawn from these artworks, most of which are languishing in museum archives, would arouse considerable public interest, especially in those parts of the UK and the rest of the world which have historical links with the iron and steel industries. I would also like to see a museum dedicated to industrial art, and as far as I am concerned it should be in Teesside..
References
Annarella, Lorie, A., Portraits of Industry: The Culture of Work in the Industrial Paintings of Howard L. Worner and Their Use in Arts Education. 2004. University Press of America.
Feaver, William, Pitmen Painters: the Ashington Group 1934–1984. 1988. Mid Northumberland Arts Group, Carcanet Press, 1993.
Hauser, Arnold, The Social History of Art. 1951. Routledge, 1999.
Klingender, Francis, D., Art and the Industrial Revolution. 1947. Granada Publishing Limited 1975.
McManners, Robert and Wales, Gillian, Shafts of Light. 2002, Gemini Productions.
You can visit the Art UK website by clicking here