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L. S. Lowry

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Artists

   Coming out of School, 1927, oil on wood, 34.7cm x 53.9cm, by
   L.S.LowryTate Gallery.
   Coming out of School, 1927, oil on wood, 34.7cm x 53.9cm, by L.S.Lowry
   Tate Gallery.
   Dwelling, Ordsall Lane, Salford, 1927, oil on wood, 43.2cm x 53.3cm, by
   L.S.LowryTate Gallery.
   Dwelling, Ordsall Lane, Salford, 1927, oil on wood, 43.2cm x 53.3cm, by
   L.S.Lowry Tate Gallery.

   Laurence Stephen Lowry ( November 1, 1887– February 23, 1976) was an
   English artist born in Barratt Street, Old Trafford, Manchester. Many
   of his drawings and paintings depict Salford and surrounding areas,
   including Pendlebury where he lived and worked for well over thirty
   years.

   Lowry is famous for painting scenes of life in the industrial districts
   of northern England during the early 20th century. He had a distinctive
   style of painting and is best known for urban landscapes peopled with
   many human figures ('matchstick men'). He tended to paint these in drab
   colours. He also painted mysterious unpopulated landscapes, brooding
   portraits, and the secret 'marionette' works (the latter only found
   after his death).

   Because of his use of stylised figures and the lack of weather effects
   in many of his landscapes he is sometimes characterised as a naïve
   'Sunday painter' although this is not the position of the galleries
   that have organised retrospective of his works.

Early life

   His family called him 'Laurie'. It was a difficult birth and his
   mother, who had been hoping for a girl, was uncomfortable even looking
   at him at first. Later she expressed her envy of her sister Mary, who
   had "three splendid daughters" instead of one "clumsy boy".

   After Lowry's birth his mother's health was too poor for her to
   continue teaching. She is reported to have been gifted and respected.
   She was an irritable, nervous woman who had been brought up to expect
   high standards by her stern father. Like him she was controlling and
   intolerant of failure. She used illness as a means of securing the
   attention and obedience of her mild and affectionate husband and she
   dominated her son in the same way. Lowry had an unhappy childhood. At
   school he made few friends and showed no academic aptitude. His father
   was affectionate towards him but he could not gain the approval that he
   craved from his mother.

Death of his parents

   His father died in 1932 leaving debts. His mother was subject to
   neurosis and depression, and became bedridden. Lowry's mother had
   always been a very important figure in his life and now he had to care
   for her. He painted from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. after his mother had fallen
   asleep. He frequently expressed regret that he received little
   recognition as an artist until the year that his mother died and that
   she had never been able to enjoy his success. From the mid 1930s until
   at least 1939 Lowry took annual holidays at Berwick-upon-Tweed. With
   the outbreak of war Lowry served as a volunteer fire watcher in
   Manchester and accepted an invitation to become a war artist. In 1953
   he was appointed Official Artist at the coronation of Elizabeth II of
   the United Kingdom.

   With the death of his mother in October 1939, Lowry became depressed
   and neglected the upkeep of his house to such a degree that the
   landlord repossessed it in 1948. He was not short of money and bought
   "The Elms" in Mottram-in-Longdendale, Hyde, Manchester. Although he
   considered the house ugly and uncomfortable he stayed there until his
   death almost thirty years later.

Retirement

   Lowry retired from the Pall Mall Property Company in 1952. During his
   career he had risen to become chief cashier but he never stopped
   collecting rents. The firm had supported his development as an artist
   and he was allowed time off for exhibitions in addition to his normal
   holiday allowance. It seems, however, that he was not proud of his job;
   his secrecy about his employment by the Pall Mall Property Company is
   widely seen as a desire to present himself as a serious artist but the
   secrecy extended beyond the art world into his social circle.

   Margery Thompson first met him when she was a schoolgirl and he became
   part of her family circle. He attended concerts with her family and
   friends, visited her home and entertained her at his Pendlebury home
   where he shared his knowledge of painting. They remained friends until
   his death but he never told her that he had any work except his art.

   In the 1950s he regularly visited friends at Cleator Moor, Cumbria
   (where Geoffrey Bennett was Manager at National Westminster Bank) and
   Southampton (where Margery Thompson had moved upon her marriage). Lowry
   painted pictures of the bank in Cleator Moor, Southampton Floating
   Bridge and other scenes local to his friends' homes.

   He befriended the 23-year-old Cumbrian artist Sheila Fell in November
   1955 and supported her career by buying several pictures that he gave
   to museums. In 1957 an unrelated thirteen-year-old schoolgirl called
   Carol Ann Lowry wrote to Lowry at her mother's urging to ask his advice
   on becoming an artist. He visited her home in Heywood, Greater
   Manchester some months later, and befriended the family. His friendship
   with Carol Ann Lowry was to last the rest of his life.

Awards

   He was awarded an honorary Master of Arts from the University of
   Manchester in 1945, and Doctor of Letters in 1961, and given freedom of
   the City of Salford in 1965. In 1975 he was awarded an honorary Doctor
   of Letters by the University of Salford and the same degree by the
   University of Liverpool. The art world celebrated his 77th birthday (in
   1964) with an exhibition of his work and that of 25 contemporary
   artists who had submitted tributes to Monk's Hall Museum, Eccles. The
   Hallé Orchestra also performed a concert in his honour and prime
   minister Harold Wilson used Lowry's painting The Pond as his official
   Christmas card. Lowry's painting Coming out of School was the stamp of
   highest denomination in a series issued by the Post Office depicting
   great British artists in 1967.

   Lowry declined an OBE in 1955, a CBE in 1961, knighthood in 1968, and
   CH in 1972 and 1976. He holds the record for the most honours declined.

Death & Legacy

   He died of pneumonia at The Woods Hospital in Glossop on 23 February
   1976 aged 88. He was buried in Chorlton (Southern Cemetery),
   Manchester, next to his parents. He left his estate, valued at
   £298,459, together with a considerable number of artworks by himself
   and others to Carol Ann Lowry, who, in 2001, obtained trademark
   protection of the artist's signature.

Personal life

   Lowry never married although he had several young female friends. He
   claimed never to have "had a girl [friend]". He said that he lived for
   his mother and that all he wanted was her smile or a word of praise
   from her. His father was indifferent to his artistic activity and
   although Lowry believed that his mother did not understand his
   painting, "she understood me and that was enough".

   In later life, starting in the 1950s, Lowry would often spend holidays
   at the Seaburn Hotel in Seaburn, Tyne & Wear, painting scenes of the
   beach, as well as nearby ports and coal mines. It is believed that the
   sea air appealed to him, as well as the industrial scenes that were
   very different from the satanic mills of Greater Manchester. Lowry is
   fondly remembered in the city as a kindly old man, always wrapped up
   even at the height of summer, who kept himself to himself.

   When he had no sketchbook with him, Lowry would often draw scenes in
   pencil or charcoal on the back of scrap paper such as envelopes,
   serviettes, and cloakroom tickets and present them to young people
   sitting with their families nearby. Such serendipitous pieces are now
   worth thousands of pounds; a serviette sketch can be seen at the
   Sunderland Mariott Hotel (formerly the Seaburn Hotel).

   He may have had Asperger's Syndrome (the high-functioning form of
   autism) but this remains a contentious diagnosis that is not shared by
   those that knew him personally.

   He was a secretive and mischievous man who enjoyed stories irrespective
   of their truth. His friends have observed that his anecdotes were more
   notable for their humour than their accuracy and in many cases he set
   out deliberately to deceive. His stories of the fictional Ann were
   inconsistent and he invented other people as frameworks upon which to
   hang his tales. The collection of clocks in his living room were all
   set at different times: to some people he said that this was because he
   did not want to know the real time; to others he claimed that it was to
   save him from being deafened by their simultaneous chimes.

   The contradictions in his life are exacerbated by this confusion. He is
   widely seen as a shy man but he had many long-lasting friendships
   including the Salford artist Harold Riley and made new friends
   throughout his adult life. He was contrary and could be selfish but he
   was generous and concerned for the well-being of his friends and of
   strangers. It may be as Sheila Fell has said: "He was a great humanist.
   To be a humanist, one has first to love human beings, and to be a great
   humanist, one has to be slightly detached from them."

   In later life he grew tired of being approached by strangers on account
   of his celebrity and he particularly disliked being visited at home in
   this way. Another of his unverifiable stories had him keeping a
   suitcase by the front door so that he could claim to be just leaving, a
   practice he claimed to have abandoned after a helpful young man
   insisted on taking him to the station and had to be sent off to buy a
   paper so that Lowry could buy a ticket for just one stop without
   revealing his deceit.

   Lowry was a supporter of Manchester City Football Club.

Works

   During his life Lowry made about 1000 paintings and over 8000 drawings.
   The lists here are some of those that are considered to be particularly
   significant.

Paintings

     * 1906 Still Life — a bowl of fruit for the first evening classes.
     * 1912 Portrait of the Artist's Mother
     * 1910 Clifton Junction Morning —
     * 1917 Coming from the Mill — early exemplar of what has become known
       as the Lowry style.
     * 1919 Frank Jopling Fletcher — portrait demonstrating that Lowry's
       stylisation was a choice and not a consequence of any lack of
       skill.
     * 1922 A Manufacturing Town — archetypal Lowry industrial landscape.
     * 1922 Regent Street, Lytham — pastoral scene in sharp contrast to A
       manufacturing town.
     * 1925 Self Portrait — a large-nosed young man (he would have been 38
       years old) in a large flat cap.
     * 1926 An Accident
     * 1927 Peel Park, Salford — an art gallery and museum that Lowry
       particularly liked and that held Salford's excellent collection of
       his work before the opening of the Lowry Centre.
     * 1927 Dwellings, Ordsall Lane, Salford — the first Lowry painting to
       be bought by the Tate Gallery (from his first London show in 1939).
     * 1928 A Street Scene — the first Lowry painting to be bought by
       Salford City Art Gallery.
     * 1928 Going to the Match — a crowd heading for a football match at
       Burnden Park, Bolton.
     * 1930 Coming from the Mill
     * 1934 The Empty House — an isolated house in grounds.
     * 1935 A Fight
     * 1935 The Fever Van
     * 1936 "Laying a Foundation Stone" The mayor of Swinton and
       Pedlebury, laying a foundation stone in Clifton.
     * 1937 The Lake — an environmental nightmare against an industrial
       background.
     * 1938 A Head of a Man — it has been suggested that this red-eyed man
       might be a portrait of Robert Lowry (who would be much older than
       the portrait suggests) or a form of self-portrait.
     * 1940 The Bedroom – Pendlebury — his late mother's room.
     * 1941 Barges on a Canal
     * 1942 The Sea A mournful painting off the Berwick coast
     * 1942 Blitzed Site — a man stands amidst the bombed ruins.
     * 1943 Britain at Play — huge busy urban scene which clearly depicts
       St Michael's Flags and Angel Meadow Park, Manchester.
     * Going To Work — painted as a war artist.
     * 1945 V.E. Day
     * 1946 The Park
     * 1947 A River Bank - bought by Bury Council for £150 in 1951, it was
       controversially sold by the Metropolitan Borough of Bury in 2006 to
       fund a £10 million budget defict for £1.25 million at a Christie's
       auction
     * 1947 Iron Works
     * 1950 The Pond — used as a Christmas card by Harold Wilson in 1964.
     * 1953 Football Ground — fans converging on Bolton Wanderers's old
       football ground Burnden Park; painted for a competition run by the
       Football Association it was later renamed Going to the Match and
       was bought by the Professional Footballers Association for a record
       £1.9 million in 1999.
     * 1955 A Young Man — a haunted youth stares at the viewer.
     * 1955 Industrial Landscape
     * 1956 The Floating Bridge — one of a pair owned by The City of
       Southampton, where the bridge operated until 1977.
     * 1957 Man Lying on a Wall — note the gentle joke that the man's
       briefcase bears the initials 'LSL'.
     * 1957 Portrait of Ann — a fiction.
     * 1959 On the sands, Oil on cavas.
     * 1960 Gentleman Looking at Something
     * 1961 River Wear at Sunderland — one of Lowry's favoured holiday
       destinations.
     * 1962 Two People
     * 1963 The Sea — typically understated seascape.
     * 1965 Industrial Scene
     * 1967 Tanker entering the Tyne

Drawings

     * 1908 Head from the Antique — very accurately observed.
     * 1914 Seated Male Nude — realistic rendition with no trace of
       'matchstick men'.
     * 1919 Robert Lowry — the artist's father.
     * 1920 The Artist's Mother
     * 1931 Pendlebury Scene
     * 1936 Dewars Lane -Lowry Trail In Berwick
     * 1956 Berwick Pier and Lighthouse
     * 1957 Woman with Beard — a woman Lowry saw on a train.
     * 1958 The Elms — Lowry's house in Mottram-in-Longdendale.
     * 1961 Colliery, Sunderland
     * 1969 The Front, Hartlepool
     * undated Palace street Berwick

Collections

   Lowry's work is held in many public and private collections. The
   largest collection is held by the City of Salford and displayed at the
   Lowry Centre. Its L. S. Lowry Collection has about 350 of his paintings
   and drawings. X-ray analysis has revealed hidden figures under his
   drawings - the 'Ann' figures. Lowry's "Going to the Match" is owned by
   the Professional Footballers Association (PFA) and is also on display
   at the Lowry Centre in Salford.

   The Tate Gallery in London owns 23 works. The City of Southampton owns
   The Floating Bridge, The Canal Bridge and An Industrial Town. His work
   is also featured at MOMA, in New York.

Memorials

   In 1978, two years after his death, Mancunian duo Brian and Michael hit
   number one in the UK pop chart with their only hit, the Lowry tribute
   Matchstalk Men And Matchstalk Cats And Dogs. Written by Ancoats born
   Michael Coleman and produced by Kevin Parrott, the record sold 750,000
   copies.

   To mark the centenary of his birth, Royston Futter, director of the L
   .S. Lowry Centenary Festival on behalf of the City of Salford and the
   BBC commissioned the Northern Ballet Theatre and Gillian Lynne to
   create a dance drama in his honour. A Simple Man was choreographed and
   directed by Lynne, with music by Carl Davis and starring Christopher
   Gable and Moira Shearer ( in her last dance role) and it won a BAFTA
   award as the best arts programme in 1988. It was subsequently
   transferred to the stage and first performed in Manchester in 1987 and
   in London at Sadlers Wells in 1988.

   In 2000, a £100-million arts and entertainment centre called "The
   Lowry" was opened in Salford Quays, Greater Manchester. The Lowry is
   named after the artist and features his work.

   In January 2005, a statue of Lowry was unveiled in Mottram, Tameside. 1
   Lowry lived 100 yards away from where the statue stands in a linked
   detached property, "The Elms", in Stalybridge Road from 1948 up until
   his death in 1976. Unfortunately this has become a target for local
   vandals with the statue being vandalised several times since being
   unveiled. 2

   In Hope High School, a house (a large group of pupils) is named after
   him.

   The Manchester rock band Oasis paid tribute to Lowry by releasing a
   music video for the single "The Masterplan" in October 2006 which uses
   Lowry style animation.
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