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Ralph Hedley R.B.A.
The smithy, Hexham Bridge End
1885
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

oil on canvas
597 x 857 mm
SIGNED b.r.c. R. Hedley 1885

EXHIBITED

Bewick Club 2nd Annual Exhibition
Newcastle, 1885 (29)

Loan Exhibition of Works
by Ralph Hedley R.B.A.
Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, 1938 (87)

PUBLIC COLLECTION 

Sunderland Museum
and Art Gallery,
Sunderland, England
Reference TWCMS : B2550
Presented by Alderman Preston,
Mayor of Sunderland (1884-5),
1885

Ralph Hedley Archive reference
1885_w001

 

 

The smithy, Hexham Bridge End

Sunderland had a municipal museum and art gallery years before Newcastle or Gateshead, and this painting was shown there in 1885, at its 4th annual paintings exhibition. Alderman R. Preston, the Mayor of Sunderland opened the exhibition and was so impressed by Hedley’s painting that he bought it and gave it to the museum’s permanent collection. He said that he knew the place where the painting is set, and he was ‘astonished at the truthfulness of the picture’.

Years later J.A. Charlton Deas, director of Sunderland’s libraries and museum wrote

“It is now more of topographical than artistic interest. I am informed that the site is now covered by an electricity sub station”