This blog entry contains my poem "A Special Light" about Gilbert Daykin, a miner who created very striking paintings of mines and colliers, perhaps the most striking being “Symbolic: the Miner Enslaved” (1938) reminiscent of images of Christ and of the chained Prometheus.
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| Symbolic: A Miner Enslaved (1938) |
Perhaps the most poignant one for me is "The Tub: At the end of the coalface" (1934) which was painted the year before my Great Uncle Jim Hooper was killed doing exactly what this miner is doing:
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| The Tub: At the end of the coalface (1934) |
These are in the permanent collection at the Science Museum along with several others donated by a relative in 1978.
Daykin was born in Barnsley but later moved to Derbyshire and worked in pits around the Notts/Derby border. His other work included paintings of the Welbeck Estate which brought him to the attention of the family there and helped raise his profile. He was never able to leave the mines and was in constant fear of the danger it brought - in the end this proved justified and he was killed at Warsop Colliery in December 1939.
You can read more about Gilbert Daykin here.
A Special Light
Home from the mine -
back-breaking, hard and dirty shift;
fireside tub to rinse the dust
while in your memory
the images remain
imprinted, burnt,
as the blackness is washed away.
Impatient for your paints and brushes,
memories transferred
from brain to canvas.
Yellow-white glow of lamp
shines on blackened muscle,
straining in its labour,
heavy boot on stony floor.
You, a miner, and miner's son,
spat out of school at just thirteen
imagine with both eyes and soul.
Dignitaries laud you
and a duchess receives but
you are never allowed to fly the
fearful pull of the grim black hole.
A miner enslaved but
with a burning desire for art;
bending to his work
with shovel and brush;
breathing in dust then
breathing life into
inanimate oil and colour.
As war clouds gathered and
the skies thundered above
a roof was falling below
and you, Gilbert Daykin,
would daub no more.
A special light, illuminating the
pitch-black of mining history,
dimmed that night
but the shining talent
will never be extinguished.
Gilbert Daykin 1886-1939
(c) Tim Fellows 2017
All images are owned by the Science Museum and are published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence
"Symbolic: A Miner Enslaved" at the Science Museum
"The Tub - at the end of the coalface" at the Science Museum
Excellent...
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