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RENOWNED artist Norman Cornish, also known as the "pitman painter," has passed away at the age of 94, family members announced yesterday.
Cornish, who was closely linked to the famed Spennymoor Settlement cultural centre, was also the last member of colliery-linked art group the Pitman's Academy.
Mr Cornish started working in the County Durham mines as a 14 year-old but became a renowned painter in his late 40s.
His work depicted a disappearing working-class life, with unemployment and deprivation featuring strongly.
His paintings of children playing on the streets and women performing domestic chores were worth thousands of pounds, making him one of Britain's most successful modern painters.
In 1974 Mr Cornish was awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree from Newcastle University in recognition of the social-historical importance of his oeuvre.
It was reported Mr Cornish died peacefully last Friday.
In 2007 Billy Elliot writer Lee Hall romanticised the Spennymoor Settlement story of the artist miners in the play The Pitmen Painters.
