Laurence Stephen Lowry ( ; 1 November 1887 – 23 February 1976) was an English artist. His drawings and paintings often depict scenes of life in the industrial districts of North West England in the mid-20th century. He developed a distinctive style of painting and is best known for his urban landscapes peopled with human figures, often referred to as "matchstick men". He also painted mysterious unpopulated landscapes, brooding portraits and the unpublished "marionette" works, which were only found after his death. He was fascinated by the sea, and painted pure seascapes, depicting only sea and sky, from the early 1940s.
His use of stylised figures which cast no shadows, and lack of weather effects in many of his landscapes led critics to label him a naïve "Sunday painter".L. S. Lowry Retrospective Exhibition (Manchester: Manchester City Art Gallery, 1959)L S Lowry RA: Retrospective Exhibition, (London: Arts Council, 1966)Mervyn Levy, L. S. Lowry (London: Royal Academy of Art, 1976)M. Leber and J. Sandling (eds.), L. S. Lowry Centenary Exhibition (Salford: Salford Museum & Art Gallery, 1987)
Lowry holds the record for rejecting British honours—five, including a knighthood (1968). A collection of his work is on display in The Lowry, a purpose-built art gallery on Salford Quays. On 26 June 2013, a major retrospective opened at the Tate Britain in London, his first at the gallery; in 2014 his first solo exhibition outside the UK was held in Nanjing, China.
Early life
Lowry was born on 1 November 1887 at 8 Barrett Street, Stretford, which was then in Lancashire. It was a difficult birth, and his mother Elizabeth, who hoped for a girl, was uncomfortable even looking at him initially. Later, she expressed envy of her sister Mary, who had "three splendid daughters" instead of one "clumsy boy". Lowry's grandfather Frederick Lowry had emigrated as a boy from Ulster in 1826 and finally settled in Manchester; he built up a career as an estate agent. His father Robert worked as a clerk for the Jacob Earnshaw and Son Property Company and was a withdrawn and introverted man. Lowry once described him as a "cold fish [...] a queer chap in many ways [...] nothing moved him. Nothing upset him. Nothing pleased him. It was as if he had got a life to get through and he got through it".
After Lowry's birth, his mother's health was too poor for her to continue teaching. She is reported to have been a religious woman who was talented and respected, with aspirations of becoming a concert pianist. She was also an irritable, nervous woman 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 maintained that he had an unhappy childhood, growing up in a repressive family atmosphere. Although his mother demonstrated no appreciation of her son's gifts as an artist, a number of books Lowry received as Christmas presents from his parents are inscribed to "Our dearest Laurie". At school he made few friends and showed no academic aptitude. His father was affectionate towards him but was, by all accounts, a quiet man who was at his most comfortable fading into the background as an unobtrusive presence.Julian Spalding, Lowry, (Oxford: Phaidon, New York: Dutton, 1979)Paul Vallely, 'Will I be a great artist?', The Independent, 23 February 2006
Much of Lowry's early years were spent in the Manchester suburb of Victoria Park, Rusholme, but in 1909, when he was 22, owing to financial pressures, the family moved to 117 Station Road in the industrial town of Pendlebury. Here the landscape comprised textile mills and factory chimneys rather than trees. Lowry later recalled: "At first I detested it, and then, after years I got pretty interested in it, then obsessed by it ... One day I missed a train from Pendlebury – [a place] I had ignored for seven years – and as I left the station I saw the Acme Spinning Company's mill ... The huge black framework of rows of yellow-lit windows standing up against the sad, damp charged afternoon sky. The mill was turning out ... I watched this scene — which I'd looked at many times without seeing — with rapture ..."
Education
After leaving school, Lowry began a career working for the Pall Mall Company, later collecting rents, he would spend some time in his lunch hour at Buile Hill Park and in the evenings took private art lessons in antique and freehand drawing. In 1905, he secured a place at the Manchester School of Art, where he studied under the French Impressionist, Pierre Adolphe Valette. Lowry was full of praise for Valette as a teacher, remarking "I cannot over-estimate the effect on me of the coming into this drab city of Adolphe Valette, full of French impressionists, aware of everything that was going on in Paris". In 1915 he moved on to the Royal Technical Institute, Salford (later to become the Royal Technical College, Salford and now the University of Salford) where his studies continued until 1925. There he developed an interest in industrial landscapes and began to establish his own style. There is no record of him serving in the First World War.McLean (1978) After the introduction of conscription he underwent a medical examination at Bury Barracks on 10 April 1916 and was categorised as unfit for active service due to having flat feet.Rohde (1979) p.65
Lowry's oil paintings were originally impressionistic and dark in tone but D. B. Taylor of the Manchester Guardian took an interest in his work and encouraged him to move away from the sombre palette he was using. Taking this advice on board, Lowry began to use a white background to lighten the pictures. He developed a distinctive style of painting and is best known for his urban landscapes peopled with human figures, often referred to as "matchstick men". According to art critic Simon Hucker, "he [Lowry] is much more sophisticated than that… This idea that he's a naive painter who can't paint any better … god, he can paint, he's a proper impressionist. These people are not caricatures – he can give you the impression of a man with a couple of strokes at the brush. In these little tiny figures you get a lot of story, and that’s his genius." He also painted mysterious unpopulated landscapes, brooding portraits and the unpublished "marionette" works, which were only found after his death.
Death of his parents
His father died in 1932, leaving debts. His mother, subject to neurosis and depression, became bedridden and dependent on her son for care. Lowry painted after his mother had fallen asleep, between 10:00 p.m. and 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. Many paintings produced during this period were damning self-portraits (often referred to as the "Horrible Heads" series), which demonstrate the influence of expressionism and may have been inspired by an exhibition of Vincent van Gogh's work at Manchester Art Gallery in 1931. He expressed regret that he received little recognition as an artist until his mother died (1939) and that she was not able to enjoy his success. From the mid-1930s until at least 1939, Lowry took annual holidays at Berwick-upon-Tweed. After the outbreak of the Second World War Lowry served as a volunteer fire watcher and became an official war artist in 1943. In 1953, he was appointed Official Artist at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. After his mother's death in October 1939, he 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 then in Cheshire. The area was much more rural but Lowry professed to dislike both the house and the area:
Although he considered the house ugly and uncomfortable, it was spacious enough both to set up his studio in the dining room and to accommodate the collection of china and clocks that he had inherited from his mother; he stayed there until his death almost 30 years later.
Personal life
In later years, Lowry spent holidays at the Seaburn Hotel in Sunderland, painting scenes of the beach and nearby ports and coal mines. When he had no sketchbook, Lowry drew scenes in pencil or charcoal on the back of envelopes, paper napkins and cloakroom tickets and presented them to young people sitting with their families. Such serendipitous pieces are now worth thousands of pounds.
He was a secretive and mischievous man who enjoyed stories irrespective of their truth.For example, that when he was treated to lunch at the Ritz by the art dealer Andras Kalman, he asked if they did Egg and Chips, The Daily Telegraph, Thursday 9 August 2007, Issue Number 47,332 p. 27. His friends observed that his anecdotes were more notable for humour than accuracy and in many cases he set out deliberately to deceive. His stories about the fictional Ann were inconsistent and he invented other people as frameworks on 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 owner of an art gallery in Manchester who visited him at his home, The Elms, noted that while his armchair was sagging and the carpet frayed, Lowry was surrounded by items such as his beloved Rossetti drawing, Proserpine, as well as a Lucian Freud drawing located between two Tompion clocks.
Lowry had many long-lasting friendships, including the Salford artist Harold Riley and painter Pat Gerrard Cooke (1935 – 2000). He made new friends throughout his adult life. He bought works from young artists he admired, such as James Lawrence Isherwood, whose Woman with Black Cat hung on his studio wall. He was friends with some of these artists; he befriended the 23-year-old Cumberland artist Sheila Fell in November 1955, describing her as "the finest landscape artist of the mid-20th century". He supported Fell's career by buying several pictures that he gave to museums. Fell later described him as "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". As he never married, this affected his influence but he did have several female friends. At the age of 88 he said that he had "never had a woman". Although seen as a mostly solitary and private person, Lowry enjoyed attending football matches and was an ardent supporter of Manchester City F.C.
Retirement
Lowry retired from the Pall Mall Property Company in 1952 on his 65th birthday.McLean, 1978 In 1957 an unrelated 13-year-old schoolgirl named Carol Ann Lowry (1944–2020) wrote to him at her mother's urging to ask his advice on becoming an artist. He visited her home in Heywood and befriended the family. His friendship with Carol Ann Lowry lasted for the rest of his life. BBC Radio 4 broadcast in 2001 a dramatisation by Glyn Hughes of Lowry's relationship with Carol Ann.
In the 1960s Lowry shared exhibitions in Salford with Warrington-born artist Reginald Waywell (1924–2019); and also exhibited alongside other contemporaries such as his friend Wigan artist Theodore Major.