Painting of a street scene depicting terraced houses with a horse-drawn cart, children playing, and adults walking. Muted colours and textured brushstrokes highlight everyday life, with a church visible in background and a curved streetlamp as a focal point.

Norman Cornish: A Life in Sketchbooks

Name: Norman Cornish: A Life in Sketchbooks
Start: 2026-06-27T00:00:00+00:00
End: 2027-01-03T23:59:59+00:00

Until 3 January 2027

Mon – Sun, 10am – 5pm

The Bowes Museum

Step inside the working imagination of Norman Cornish in this intimate exhibition, bringing together finished drawings, paintings and watercolours alongside the preparatory sketches that shaped them.

Across a lifetime, Cornish filled 269 sketchbooks, capturing the streets, people, and communities of the Durham coalfield with remarkable insight and warmth. His belief that sketchbooks should “have a life of their own… to teach people to look at things” comes alive in this display, which also features a major new acquisition made possible with the legacy funds of the Friends of the Bowes Museum, strengthening the museum’s collection of one of the North’s celebrated twentieth-century artists.