RALPH HEDLEY RBA 1848 – 1913
Born at Gilling West near Richmond, Hedley was the son of a carpenter who, seeing the opportunities in the fast growing Newcastle-upon-Tyne moved there to set up a joinery business. Ralph began his working life as an apprentice gilder and woodcarver in Newcastle, attending the city's Government School of Art and Design. By the time he was twenty-two he had his own business, Ralph Hedley, Artistic and Architectural Carver. Once this business was firmly established, Hedley felt able to devote serious time to his painting.
Hedley was instrumental in establishing the Bewick Club in Newcastle and became its President in 1895, over the head of Robert Jobling who had considered the position to be his own. He also played a part in the founding of the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle.
It was during the 1880s that Ralph Hedley discovered Runswick Bay and he painted there for many summers, performing a similar role to Gilbert Foster in encouraging the younger artists in the colony. It was he, in the mid 1890s, who encouraged Rowland Hill to study art full time.
It is probable that Hedley’s responsibilities as president of the Bewick Club gradually prevented him from spending summers in Runswick as he does not appear to have been involved with the Staithes Art Club. Like Gilbert Foster, however, he had such an important influence encouraging artists both to come to the Yorkshire coast and to paint in the broad and honest manner he embraced that he must be regarded as a member of the Group.
Hedley’s influences came through the Newlyn School rather than directly from Paris. He wrote of Newlyn artists, ‘This school goes in for everything as they can see it and will not choose any subject unless it can be arranged so that they can see their models and background complete, as they want it to appear in the picture, so that they can compare their relative tones and values…’
As the Newlyn School gradually changed from using rectangular brushstrokes to more fluid ones, Hedley also changed his style, but his best work is always characterised by a looseness of brushwork which gives it a sense of spontaneity. Occasionally one can find a hard-edged example which jars with the main body of his work and which I still find difficult to place chronologically. Of all the Staithes Group painters he is the one who is most concerned with painting people and he does this with insight and sensitivity.
Hedley exhibited at the Arts association Newcastle, the Bewick Club Newcastle, the Central Exchange Art Gallery Newcastle, the Gateshead Municipal Improvement Society, the Royal Academy, the Royal Institute of painters in Water Colours, the Royal Society of British Artists and the Royal Scottish Academy.
There is a large collection of Hedley’s work in the Laing Gallery and there are also examples in public galleries in Gateshead, Hartlepool, South Shields and Sunderland.
Bibliography:
Staithes Group Centenary Exhibition, Rosamund Jordan 2003
Ralph Hedley, Tyneside Painter, John Millard, Tyne and Wear Museums 1990.
The Artists of Northumbria, Marshall Hall, 2nd Edition, Titus Wilson & Son Ltd., Kendal,
1982.
The Dictionary of British Artists 1880 – 1940, J. Johnson & A. Greutzner, Antique
Collectors’ Club, Woodbridge 1976
© Rosamund Jordan 2003
