Double-take on life down the pits

Pit Profiles: Re-profiled has opened at the National Coal Mining Museum for England, at the Caphouse Colliery in Overton, Wakefield.

The exhibition features a series of portraits from the 1940s and 50s by painter HA Freeth, alongside their modern day photographic recreations by artist Anton Want.

The project was inspired by the work of portrait painter Freeth, who died in 1986, who was the first artist to be commissioned by the National Coal Board.

The artist created his portraits of miners at Kellingley Colliery, the largest remaining deep mine in Yorkshire.

To put together the profiles, Freeth visited collieries across Britain, talking with and sketching their workforces.

Between 1947 and 1952, his portraits and stories were published in Coal, the NCB’s monthly magazine, as a series called Pit Profile.

In 2011, the museum received support from Arts Council England to commission the award-winning photographer, Anton Want, to undertake a series of contemporary pit profiles. Using photography and oral histories, Anton Want has now created a modern-day Pit Profile series at Kellingley.

It is hoped Freeth’s original drawings and paintings, alongside Want’s photographs, will provide new insights into working colliery life across two centuries.

Echoing Freeth’s original monthly Pit Profile series, a selection of portraits from the exhibition will also be featured on the museum’s blog. Visitors to the blog are encouraged to help the museum to discover more about the men in Freeth’s pictures. To log in go to www.ncm.org.uk/blog. The exhibition is free entry and runs until May.