George William Bissill spent his childhood at Langley Mill, where his father was a miner and he worked in the mines from age 11 to 13. At the outbreak of WWI he joined the Sappers – or soldiers who perform a variety of military engineering duties. He survived the war but suffered long lasting emotional trauma of witnessing the horrors of war at such a young age. Probably to channel his anxieties, Bissill started drawing and painting, briefly attending Nottingham School of Art.
Bissill made this woodcut around the same year as his first solo exhibition at the Redfern Gallery in London. Immediately, the art world praised the “Pitman Painter” and collectors snapped up Bissill’s work. His Parisian exhibition after was also a success. However, London probably was too much for the artist. In 1934 he moved out to the country where he continued his work in relative obscurity till his death in 1973.
