Charlie Rogers

Charlie Rogers · Gateshead · 1930 to 2020

The official website for the artist Charles Henry Rogers

For fifty-six years a self-taught painter from Gateshead raced the demolition crews, recording the back lanes, pubs, churches and corner shops of Tyneside in the days before they came down.

See the workRead his story
Bensham Road in deep snow under a heavy blue night sky, a woman pushing a pram past lit shopfronts.
Bensham Road, Gateshead1970
Charlie Rogers in 1966, standing on the steps against the brick wall of the back yard at 239 Westbourne Avenue, drawing in a sketchbook, with a dustbin at left and an old wooden chair stacked on a crate at right.
Charlie sketching in the back yard of 239 Westbourne Avenue, 1966.

“I feel I have spent much of my career being pursued by bulldozers.”

Charlie Rogers

The race

He painted them. Then they were gone.

Each line runs across his painting life, 1964 to 2020. A square marks a painting. Red is a building lost, ochre one altered past recognition, green one still standing. Of the 12 places on this site, 1 is gone and 1 more is altered.

Favourite painting locations

  1. Cotfield Street

    Demolished

    Bensham, Gateshead

    Painted 1964; demolished, year not yet confirmed.

  2. Railway Quarter (Gateshead East)

    Altered

    Gateshead East

    Painted 1966; since altered.

  3. St Cuthbert's Church, Bensham

    Extant

    Bensham, Gateshead

    Painted 1980, 1982; still standing.

  4. Coatsworth Road

    Extant

    Bensham, Gateshead

    Year painted not recorded; still standing.

  5. Saltwell Park

    Extant

    Low Fell, Gateshead

    Painted 2003, 2017; still standing.

The lucky break

1964, the lucky break

At thirty-four, Charlie took a heavy knock to a damaged knee in a cup tie and was signed off for a week. Limping to his aunt’s house on Bensham Road, he sat with a cup of tea and looked out at the back lane of Cotfield Street. Over five or six mornings he painted it, in pen and wash.

The street was demolished soon after. He spent the rest of his life racing the bulldozers, and credited it all to the anonymous half-back who crippled him.

How it began
Cotfield Street in watercolour: Taits corner shop at left, terraced houses running uphill, a man walking a dog.
Cotfield Street, Bensham, Gateshead-on-TyneWatercolour. Another painting of the same street.
The cobbled back lane of Cotfield Street seen from above: yard walls and outhouses, chimney stacks, a telegraph pole, and a poster on the gable end at right.
Back Cotfield Street, GatesheadPen and wash, November 1964.

“The subjects of his paintings are the things and places you never notice until they are gone.”

Derek KirkupDirector, Percy Gallery, 1973

From the catalogue

Tyneside, as he saw it

The whole catalogue
The Joke Shop in the Railway Quarter, Gateshead, under a great railway arch, shopfronts in red and yellow, figures sheltering.

The Joke Shop, Gateshead-on-Tyne

1966
Charlie's father, Pop, seated at a table crowded with bottles and ornaments, in a flat cap.

Pop

1967
Eight men in caps and coats seated along a park bench, a black dog in front of them.

The Men on the Seats

1973
Market stalls and crowds in the Bigg Market, Newcastle, a delivery van among the barrows, tall stone frontages behind.

Bigg Market, Newcastle-on-Tyne

1975
Grey's Monument in snow, the domed curve of Grey Street behind, small figures crossing the square.

The Monument with Snow, Newcastle-on-Tyne

1996
Four adjoining front doors in a brick terrace, green, red and brown, with worn stone steps.

Four Doors at School Street, Gateshead

1977

The third name

Lowry, Cornish, Rogers

“Charlie’s work is regarded as being on a par with that of other Northern artists of national significance such as L. S. Lowry and Norman Cornish.”

Historic England

Brian Rankin’s book Pursued by Bulldozers places Charlie Rogers alongside L. S. Lowry and Norman Cornish as the third of the post-war chroniclers of working life in the North of England.

Salford

L. S. Lowry

1887 to 1976

the mills and crowds of industrial Lancashire

Spennymoor

Norman Cornish

1919 to 2014

the pit village and its people

Gateshead

Charlie Rogers

1930 to 2020

the back lanes of Tyneside, before the bulldozers