Thomas Hair's Views of the Coal Mines in Northumberland and Durham

In 1839 artist Thomas H. Hair of Newcastle issued A Series of Views of the Collieries in the Counties of Northumberland and Durham. With Descriptive Sketches and a Preliminary Essay on Coal and the Coal Trade by M. Ross. This volume included 42 engravings after watercolors of coal mines in North East England with extensive text about each mine. As M. Ross wrote in the beginning of his essay:

"The characteristic appearance of no district in the world is more strikingly marked than is that of the North of England, the peculiar features of which are its collieries and their necessary adjuncts. The face of the country is thickly studded with the engine -houses and coal-heaps attached to respective pits… The fields and roads are crossed are crossed and intersected in every direction by the “waggon-ways” connecting the pits with their respective places of shipment… The margins of our noble rivers are fringed with the staiths and machinery, often constructed on a gigantic scale, necessary for effecting for effecting the shipment of the jetty treasure… The sea itself is blackened with our fleets of colliers, bearing the precious source of warmth and comfort to distant districts and countries, and thus diffusing wealth and happiness around…"

Hair provides unique visual documentation on the above ground industrial structures of coal mines, and very few views of life below ground. His book has been criticised for not reflecting the struggles and everyday life of the miners and their communities. Few of the images hint at the hazardous working conditions and great dangers involved in coal mining at this time. It is believed that Hair ignored these grim realities in order to sell his work.

Hair's watercolors survived and were edited by Douglas Glendinning in The Art of Mining: Thomas Hair’s Watercolours of the Great Northern Coalfield (Newcastle: Tyne Bridge Publishing, 2000).