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Ralph Hedley R.B.A.
In school
1881
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

oil on canvas
510 x 410 mm
SIGNED b.l.c. R Hedley | 83

EXHIBITED 

Central Exchange Art Gallery, 
Grainger Street, Newcastle, 1883 (151)

Ralph Hedley: Tyneside Painter,
Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, 1990-91

PUBLIC COLLECTION

Laing Art Gallery,
Newcastle upon Tyne, England
Reference TWCMS : G4779
Given in memory of
Farquhar M. Laing,
Hexham,1931

 

Ralph Hedley Archive reference
1883_w014

In school

The boy appears in several of Hedley’s paintings of the mid 1880s. He is, for example, in The ballad seller, the Black Gate, Newcastle (1884). His name was John Irwin, and he was the younger brother of Tom Irwin, who worked at Ralph Hedley’s woodcarving workshop.

Tom Irwin was himself the model for one of the men in Hedley’s painting Shoeing a refractory horse in the stocks - Shoeing the bay mare, 1885. (1883_w012)