Ralph Hedley: Painter of North East Scenes and the Working Class

2026-01-31

Download

The arts remain one of the best ways to preserve culture in a way that people can interact with. Literature, folk music, and art, among others, allow us to experience culture, even secondhand, using tangible sources. Even better, we can create our own responses to this culture using our chosen cultural medium. Painter Ralph Hedley captured ordinary, working-class life around Tyneside and Northumberland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We’ll explore how he captured scenes of ritual, tradition, and c...

Painter Ralph Hedley captured ordinary, working-class life around Tyneside and Northumberland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We’ll explore how he captured scenes of ritual, tradition, and custom in his beautiful paintings, and investigate what they can tell us about the way folklore shows up, primarily in cities.

But we're also focusing on his work as an example of how much community rituals mattered in the past as a way of bringing people together. We need that now, more than ever.

Let’s go and explore the work of Ralph Hedley in this week's episode of Fabulous Folklore.

Find the blog post with all the images and references here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/ralph-hedley/

Donate to Stand with Minnesota: https://www.standwithminnesota.com/

Share your Children's Folklore here: https://forms.gle/D8mLW7q2um5ZYiTD9

Get your free guide to home protection the folklore way here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/fab-folklore/

Become a member of the Fabulous Folklore Family for bonus episodes and articles at https://patreon.com/bePatron?u=2380595

Get weekly articles and bonus content at Substack: https://fabulousfolklore.substack.com/

Buy Icy a coffee or sign up for bonus episodes at: https://ko-fi.com/icysedgwick

Fabulous Folklore Bookshop: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/fabulous_folklore

Pre-recorded illustrated talks: https://ko-fi.com/icysedgwick/shop

Request an episode: https://forms.gle/gqG7xQNLfbMg1mDv7

Get extra snippets of folklore on Instagram at https://instagram.com/icysedgwick