Norman Cornish MBE

Norman Cornish painted the pit villages of County Durham with the same devotion Charlie brought to Tyneside's back lanes. A former miner from Spennymoor, he was already an established figure when the two men met at Charlie's first exhibition in 1965 and found they had more in common than geography.

They sketched together around each other's territory for decades, meeting in pubs and at the Stone Gallery in Newcastle. In 1968 Cornish drew Charlie standing before a Lowry at the Stone Gallery, one of several works the two men made in direct response to each other. Cornish died in 2014; Charlie dedicated work to his memory for years afterwards.