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Although the amateur artist Hannah Keen is believed to have made only one mining portrait, her contribution still deserves recognition. Her father, James Keen, was Chairman of the Wigan Coal and Iron Company. The Keen family’s close connection with the industry must have provided her with an obvious source of inspiration. Her portrait of a pit-brow girl is believed to show one of the many female surface workers who were employed at Maypole Colliery during the late nineteenth century. The portrait is also thought to show the influence of Arthur Wasse’s painting of the same subject made three years earlier and the photographs of A. J. Munby. The Coal Mines Act of 1842 banned women and girls of any age from working underground, but in a handful of coal-mining districts women were still able to work on the surface.
National Coal Mining Museum for England
Wakefield
Title
Pit Brow Girl
Date
1895
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
H 39 x W 29 cm
Accession number
YKSMM: 2004.2736
Acquisition method
gift from Mr William R. Hill, 2004
Work type
Painting
