Thomas Harrison Hair (1810-1875) made paintings of the coal mines of North-East England in preparation for his book of etchings: Views of the Collieries in the Counties of Northumberland and Durham, 1844. The book became well known, but the watercolours have rarely been reproduced. These delicate and evocative colour images of the Great Northern Coalfield vividly capture the scenes that the artist witnessed on his travels through the mining communities of the North-East. Douglas Glendinning's The Art of Mining aims to enrich our understanding of how the landscape of Northumberland and Durham, and the lives of the people living there, were transformed during the Industrial Revolution.