Lowry by Masterart

Laurence Stephen Lowry RA, RBA, LG, NS (1887-1976)

Laurence Stephen Lowry’s extraordinary standing and popularity owe everything to his reputation as an urban realist, a painter of mill towns populated with a myriad of ‘stick’ figures. In truth, for more than a third of his career he had left the urban scenes behind and turned to more solitary subjects, reflecting perhaps his own loneliness. Lowry was born in Manchester to relatively prosperous parents, who in 1909, moved to the industrial district of Pendlebury.

He studied at Manchester and Salford Schools of Art until 1928, whilst working as a clearly very sympathetic rent collector, one of Lowry’s teachers being Pierre Adolphe Valette (1876-1942). From 1932 Lowry exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy and in 1934 was elected RBA. 1939 saw his first one-man exhibition and sadly the death of his mother with whom he had lived, his father having died in 1932. Lowry stayed in Pendlebury until 1948, then moved to Mottram in Longdendale, Cheshire, which from all accounts he disliked, and where he died in 1976. Lowry was belatedly elected ARA in 1955 and RA in 1962.

Lowry was perhaps surprisingly, a great admirer of the Pre-Raphaelites; he owned works by Dante Gabriel Charles Rossetti (1828-1882) and Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893), and works by Lucien Freud (1922-2011).

His early work owes something to an Anglicised form of impressionism, while his industrial scenes, far from being naïve or primitive, show careful observation and character, the work of an artist who studied at art school a considerable time. Without question, Lowry is a unique artist, his works a product of his environment and character, one of the great names in 20th Century British art.

The Street Orator

Signed and dated, lower left: L.S. LOWRY 1922 Oil on panel

10⅞ x 20⅜ in – 27.6 x 51.7 cm

Provenance:

Lefevre Gallery, London; David Carr Esq.; Crane Kalman Gallery, London; Richard Drewell Esq.; MacConnal-Mason Gallery, London; Private collection, UK

Exhibited:

City of Manchester Art Gallery, LS Lowry Retrospective Exhibition, 3 June – 12 July 1959, cat. no.12;

Sheffield, The Graves Art Gallery, Paintings and Drawings, 15 September – 14 October 1962, cat. no.7;

Arts Council of Great Britain, L S Lowry RA Retrospective Exhibition, Sunderland Art Gallery, 27 August – 17 September 1966; Manchester, Whitworth Art Gallery, 24 September – 15 October 1966;

Bristol, City Art Gallery, 22 October – 12 November 1966; London, Tate Gallery, 22 November 1966 – 15 January 1967; London, MacConnal-Mason Gallery, L.S. Lowry, 14 November – 11 December 2012, no.1

The Street Orator of 1922, although altered somewhat when Lowry came upon it some 20 years later, is a seminal work in the progression to Lowry’s mature style. It shows in composition and colour significant differences to contemporary works, A Pit Tragedy of 1919 (Lowry, Salford), in which the grouped figures involve the viewer and the background is less ordered, or to A Sudden Illness of 1920 (Private collection) in which the staging of figures is similar and isolated from the viewer, but isolated too in terms of place. Here in The Street Orator we have Lowry one step removed from his mature style, we see the subject as if through a window, separated from even the foreground figures, set against houses, mills and chimneys, the composition framed by the buildings either side in a stage like set. The whole bears comparison with Coming Out of School, 1927 (Tate, London) both in terms of perspective and in the buildings themselves. The Street Orator illustrates Lowry’s use of flake white and, in addition the debt that he owed to Adolphe Valette, his teacher at Manchester Municipal College of Art, where Lowry continued to take classes until 1925.

The surface of The Street Orator shows Lowry’s confident use of paint, the thickly applied white, dragged with a dry brush, the thick white in the sky cut through to the ground to delineate chimneys and a church spire. The figures in the crowd each distinct yet isolated listening to the Orator. This must have been a relatively commonplace scene in an impoverished post-war town, which Lowry would have come across in his perambulations across the city in his role with the Pall Mall Property Company.

Excavating in Manchester

Signed and dated, lower left: L.S. LOWRY. 1932; titled on the stretcher Oil on canvas

17½ x 25 in – 44.4 x 63.5 cm

Provenance:

The Holmes a’Court Collection, Australia; Private collection, UK; MacConnal-Mason Gallery, London; Private collection, UK Exhibited:

Salford, Museum and Art Gallery, Summer Exhibition of Recent Paintings by Eminent British Artists, 27 June – 15 August 1934, no.77; London, Alex Reid and Lefevre, Paintings of the Midlands by L.S. Lowry, February 1939, no.22; Sunderland, Art Gallery, Industrial Street Scenes etc. by Laurence S. Lowry RBA, 21 September – 13 October 1942; London, MacConnal-Mason Gallery, L.S. Lowry, 14 November – 11 December 2012, no.3; London, Tate Britain, Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life, 25 June – 20 October 2013, cat. no.49, p.104, illustrated

By 1932, the year Lowry’s father died, he had achieved considerable success. He was 45 years old, friends with many of the Manchester arts establishment, the novelist Howard Spring, the artist Muirhead Bone, Arthur Wallace, Literary Editor of the Guardian, and his champion Daisy Jewell, of the framer Bourlet. He had exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1928, at the NEAC from 1927, he had held an exhibition of drawings in 1930, all of which had sold, and paintings had been acquired by the Manchester City Art Gallery and the Duveen fund for the Tate.

It was against this background that Lowry embarked on a major composition, Excavating in Manchester, which had been in gestation since 1929. The subject is the building of a warehouse and head office for the textile company, Rylands and Sons. Founded by John Rylands (18011888) he built the company into the largest textile manufacturer in the country. The warehouse building on Market Street was designed by Harry S. Fairhurst, and construction took place 1929-32. The building, one of the last and biggest warehouses to be built in Manchester was subsequently converted to Paulden’s department store in 1950 and is now Debenhams.

Such a major construction project was unmissable to Lowry and he made several sketches of the work from 1929 culminating in this painting completed, as was the building, in 1932. These drawings vary considerably, Lowry placed considerable value on drawing as a medium and amongst the group are works showing the overall composition and fully worked up drawings of specific elements. The painting itself is unusual, for a painter of the industrial scene, Lowry rarely portrayed workers carrying out their jobs, going to and from work, but here in ‘excavating’ work is taking place, it is a hive of activity. It is as though Lowry was providing an historical record of what was an important building for the city built by one of its largest employers. It was a building he portrayed some 20 years later in Piccadilly Gardens, 1954 (Manchester City Art Gallery).

Industrial Landscape

(The Football Match)

Signed and dated, lower right: L.S. LOWRY 1934 Oil on canvas

16 x 26 in – 40.6 x 66 cm

Provenance:

Wilfrid Evill; Private collection, UK; Honor Frost; MacConnal-Mason Gallery, London; Private collection, UK

Exhibited:

Brighton, Brighton Art Gallery and Museum, The Wilfrid Evill Memorial Exhibition, June – August 1965, no.103; London, MacConnal-Mason Gallery, L.S. Lowry, 14 November – 11 December 2012, no.4

The late 1920’s and early 1930’s brought some success and recognition to Lowry. He had close-knit groups of friends in Manchester, including Howard Spring, the novelist, writers and journalists on the Manchester Guardian, curators and the influential and well-connected Daisy Jewell, director of the framers Bourlet. He had exhibited in Paris, at the Salon d’Automne at the Artistes Français from 1928 and at the New English Art Club from 1927. In 1930 Lowry held an exhibition of 25 drawings in Manchester, all of which sold, Manchester City Art Gallery had acquired The Accident in 1926 and the following year the Duveen fund at the Tate had purchased Coming out of School. He was listed in Who’s Who of European Painters in 1931 as specialising in industrial scenes and, although widespread success had eluded him, the 1930’s saw Lowry produce some of his finest work. This Industrial Landscape was acquired by perhaps the greatest patron of 20th Century British Art, Wilfrid Evill.

Industrial Landscape was completed two years after his father’s death, though painted in a sombre palette, highlights of red and the pink tiled terrace houses alleviate the mood. Though Manchester and the cotton industry were in decline and a high percentage of the city’s population below the poverty line, this painting shows a city at work and play. The gigantic mills loom over the city billowing forth smoke, emphasizing their importance to all, while in the foreground a football match takes place, crowds surrounding the pitch and latecomers hurrying towards it. The terraced housing, dwarfed by the mills are set in serried ranks, and seen from a high viewpoint, something that was to become a hallmark of Lowry’s industrial scenes later in the decade. From this viewpoint our eye is led into the composition along the tramlines towards the red tram in the middle distance. Lowry has portrayed a working smokefilled inhabited city, very different from the desolation of The Lake, of 1937 (Lowry, Salford), or the later somewhat manicured Industrial Landscape, of 1955 (Tate London).

Painted on a coarse canvas with heavy layers of thick paint, Lowry has worked the medium dragging paint with a dry brush, layering it on with brush and fingertips, his fingerprints evident in the sky, and scraping and cutting through the surface. This work in its panoramic form, which Lowry developed in the 1930’s, and its high viewpoint that was to become so characteristic and in its powerful imagery, marks a seminal period in Lowry’s career.

The Playground

Signed and dated, lower left: L. S. LOWRY 1945 Oil on canvas

18¼ x 24½ in – 46.4 x 62.2 cm

Provenance:

Lefevre Gallery, London; Grove Galleries, Manchester; Private collection, UK; MacConnal-Mason Gallery, London; Private collection, UK

Exhibited:

London, Lefevre Gallery, Recent Paintings by L.S. Lowry, March 1951, no.24

Literature:

London, Crane Kalman Gallery, A Tribute to L.S. Lowry, November 1966 – January 1967, no.15, pl. VI

Painted in 1945 there is an air of ‘joie de vivre’ about The Playground, suggesting that it was painted following the end of the war. Lowry painted a number of cheerful paintings in the 1940’s, seaside subjects, parks and playgrounds, with a brighter palette and an uplifting atmosphere, in marked contrast to his works of the previous two decades. His painting of the same title, painted in 1935, is dour in colour tone and atmosphere, in relation to the present work of 10 years later.

Here Lowry shows the children playing, interacting, involved with their surroundings and conscious of others, a child turns and stares at an adult onlooker, owner of a dog, which has squeezed through the park railings into the playground to the owner’s consternation. The children are colourfully dressed, climbing the slide and gathered in groups, and Lowry’s vermillion, Prussian blue and yellow ochre appear vibrant against the aged lead-white ground. The paint is applied in thick layers - with brush, sponge and thumb a favoured ‘tool’ of Lowry’s - and smeared, scraped and sculpted; on occasion he will cut the paint with a knife leaving a sharp edge, which will refract the light and create a distinctive shimmering effect.

This is an expansive composition. In the distance we see vestiges of the industrial past, distant chimneys hinted at in shades of white, which lead the viewer through the playground itself and down the broad walk to the open parkland, the church and rectory to the factories beyond.

The Canal at Worsley

Signed and dated, lower right: L. S. LOWRY 1946; inscribed with title, on the reverse Oil on board

12 x 16 in – 30.5 x 40.6 cm

Provenance:

Alex. Reid & Lefevre, London; The Seveviratne and Alexander Collection; MacConnal-Mason Gallery, London; Private collection, UK

The birth of the Industrial Revolution was rooted in the network of canals across the country, and it is therefore appropriate and unsurprising that they should feature in Lowry’s paintings documenting industrial decline. Our painting can be compared with Barges on a Canal of 1941 in the Aberdeen Art Gallery, while canals also feature in Industrial landscape, The Canal of 1945 in the Leeds City Art Gallery, and in Canals and Factories of 1955 in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. In this present powerful work, the barges are outlined in black, emphasising their presence and purpose. Masts and derricks are silhouetted against a leaden sky, while bold reds are reflected in the still waters. Beyond the brick-built warehouse we see the veiled outline of a town depicted and defined with the use of the butt end of the artist’s brush; a church spire, emphasised in pencil, breaks the horizon line. In contrast to the Aberdeen painting, there is here, despite the presence of the town, a deep sense of solitude in what is an intense and bold composition.

Three Figures

Signed, lower left: L.S. LOWRY Oil on panel

8¾ x 6 in – 22.5 x 15.5 cm

Provenance:

Lefevre Gallery, London; Private collection; MacConnal-Mason Gallery, London; Private collection, UK

Heavily layered, textured, lead white was the ground on which Lowry frequently based his works. In this instance Three Figures, painted from the memory of an observation, in the calm of his studio at night, shows a husband intent and hurrying, wife caught by the attention of the artist and the daughter accompanying her parents, unified in parallel step, but separate, distracted and detached. The paint surface is sculpted around the figures, the faces created with a thumb print, and the long flowing brushstrokes forming the clothing convey a sense of movement in the hurried steps.

Lowry was an astonishing observer of snatched moments, conveying so much with sparse brushwork and the use of a knife and thumb, and in tones made up of vermillion, yellow ochre, Prussian blue, black and his lead white.

The Orator

Signed and dated, lower right: L.S. LOWRY 1950 Oil on canvas

20 x 24 in – 50.8 x 61 cm

Provenance:

Alex. Reid & Lefevre Ltd., London; A. J. Thompson Esq., UK; MacConnal-Mason Gallery, London; Private collection, UK

Literature:

Mervyn Levy, The Paintings of L.S. Lowry, Jupiter Books, London, 1975, illustrated pl.62 (as The Street) Shelley Rohde, The Lowry Lexicon, The Lowry Centre Ltd., Salford, 2001, illustrated p.87 (as Street Trader)

T.G. Rosenthal, L.S. Lowry, The Art and the Artist, Unicorn Press, Norwich, 2010, illustrated p.43 (as The Election)

The Orator, the subject and title of this work is one of the most intriguing characters in Lowry’s oeuvre. Men of African or Asian descent appear infrequently in Lowry’s paintings and here his role is equivocal, is he a politician, a street trader or perhaps a preacher, and who is the squire like figure, a rival, a potential customer, or an acolyte. The Orator himself is a charismatic figure, he has left his soapbox in the passion of his delivery, left arm raised, his right somewhat incongruously holding an umbrella, the audience are spellbound. Lowry captures the intensity of concentration on their faces, each among the crowd an individual, a mere two or three in the foreground inconspicuously sidling away.

Crowds of figures are closely associated with Lowry’s paintings, appearing in major compositions such as Going to the Match and Station Approach, (no.10). In these works, the crowds are seen in and among the city or stadium, an important, but secondary, constituent part of the composition. Here in The Orator, it is the reverse, the crowd of figures and the Orator himself, each carefully and individually drawn are ‘the main event’, and the buildings a backdrop. Lowry has composed a stage like setting and used an unusual intensity of colour to help differentiate the youths, men women and girls from all walks of life. Each figure can be examined and seen as an individual, through juxtaposition of colours, the application of paint, the long fluid brushstroke, the stippling, the use of a black line or dot for an eye, and the fleck of white in the corner showing the direction of a sidelong glance, the commonality being the spellbinding Orator.

St. Paul’s School, Bennett Street

Signed and dated, lower right: L.S. LOWRY 1950 Oil on canvas

24 x 20 in – 61 x 50.8 cm

Provenance:

Alex. Reid & Lefevre Ltd., London (as Going to School); Fred Uhlman; A. J. Thompson Esq., UK

Exhibited:

London, Alex. Reid & Lefevre Ltd., New English Art (details untraced); London, Royal Academy of Arts, L. S. Lowry, 4 September – 14 November 1976, cat. no.189

Literature:

M. W. Lees, Bennett Street Sunday School, Stellar Books LLP, Cheshire, 2013, illustrated on the cover

St Paul’s School, Bennett Street was a place of deep significance to Lowry. His parents had met there and his mother, Elizabeth, had attended the school and subsequently taught music there. As a boy, Lowry would accompany her to the school when she would play the organ at religious services; he had an extraordinarily close attachment to his mother continuing until her death in 1939.

The school itself played an influential role in the New Cross area of inner city Manchester, several of Lowry’s cousins attended the school, which, in accordance with the prevailing views of the period, reinforced Christian moral principles in the local community.

In this painting Lowry accurately portrays the architecture of the school, he centres the building in the composition, reinforcing its pivotal role in New Cross. We see here figures gathered before the school, walking purposefully towards it emphasising this role. Lowry was a masterful painter of figures, with an extraordinary economy of brushwork, a tilt of the head, a swirling coat conveying an animated conversation and a chill breeze. Furthermore, in the tall striding figure in the foreground it is easy to surmise that Lowry has included himself in this work, the subject of which meant so much to the artist.

Derbyshire

Signed and dated, lower left: L.S. LOWRY 1953

Oil on panel

6 x 9 in – 15.3 x 22.8 cm

Provenance:

Tom Cross Esq., gift from the artist, 1954; Private collection, UK; MacConnal-Mason Gallery, London; Private collection, UK

Lowry had painted landscapes as early as 1915, it was a subject he returned to in the 1930’s with A Landmark,1936 (Lowry Salford). But it was in the 1950’s that landscape became a significant part of his oeuvre. With his retirement from the Pall Mall Property Company, Lowry had more time to travel the country. He spent much time in the North East and painted in Wales and Cornwall, Lowry was an inveterate rambler, and a sociable man with close friends. This view of a country road, in Derbyshire, is a view he would have painted, probably from drawings and sketches made on the spot. Living in Mottram in Longdendale, on the edge of the Peak District this scene could have been close by. He produced a larger version the following year, in 1954 once owned by Lady Vansittart.

Lowry is often quoted as saying “I paint what I see”, disingenuous if taken literally given his ‘composite’ industrial scenes. His relationship with landscape is not dissimilar, often highly contrived barren scenes with a complete absence of human life, as in Lake Landscape, 1950 (Whitworth Art Gallery University of Manchester), or his highly sexualized landscapes e.g. A Landmark, 1936 (Lowry Salford). However, here we have a comparatively benign landscape, a country lane, flanked by telegraph poles and dry stone walls and with a figure silhouetted against the sky, a lane that one can see Lowry tramping up to see the vista over the crest of the hill. Painted on one side of his aged white panels, ‘yellowing nicely’ one sees the lavish use of paint, the thickness of the impasto about the stone wall and the incised lines for posts. The telegraph poles are almost embedded, such is the depth of paint, and there is a real sense of vigour in the delineation of the walls and lane. The milky green is a colour seen in many of his more benign landscapes, in contrast to the darker colours in his barren views.

Station Approach, Manchester

Signed and dated, lower left: L.S. LOWRY 1960

Oil on canvas

30 x 40 in – 76.2 x 101.6 cm

Provenance:

Alex. Reid & Lefevre Ltd., London; Waddington Galleries, London; Crane Kalman Gallery, London; Victor Sandleson Esq.; Mrs. C. Zukas, UK; Private collection, UK; MacConnal-Mason Gallery, London; Private collection, UK

Exhibited:

London, Alex. Reid & Lefevre Ltd., L. S. Lowry, October 1961, cat. no.33, illustrated (as A Station Approach)

Literature:

Judith Sandling and Mike Leber, Lowry’s City, A Painter and his Locale, Lowry Press, Salford, 2000, p.74, illustrated fig.1

Painted in 1960, Station Approach, Manchester is one of the few compositions where Lowry was almost entirely faithful to the scene he was depicting. This was the case with a number of similar, large scale paintings of distinctive landmarks executed around this period, including Piccadilly Circus.

The London and North Western Railway Exchange station was built in 1884 with principle links to Liverpool, Huddersfield, Leeds, Hull and Newcastle, as well as services to London, Euston. Its importance as a hub is emphasised by the concentrated flow of people, passing the Cromwell statue which was presented to the city in 1875, and crossing the railway bridge.

Station Approach, Manchester was clearly something Lowry held in high regard as, following his election to the RA in 1962, he presented the Academy with a smaller version of the present work.

Peel Park, Salford

Signed and indistinctly dated, lower right: L.S. LOWRY 19Oil on canvas

16⅛ x 12 in – 41 x 30.5 cm

Provenance:

The Lefevre Gallery, London; Acquired from the above; Private collection, Pennsylvania, USA Exhibited:

London, The Lefevre Gallery, New Paintings by L.S. Lowry, October 1961, no.21

Peel Park along the River Irwell was one of three parks opened from 1846 paid for by public subscription for the people of Manchester and Salford to enjoy for recreation. The Park was a subject painted and drawn by Lowry on many occasions and in different guises throughout his life. His interpretation of the park and its surroundings varied from crowds around the Bandstand, appearing in drawings in the 1920’s to treating the park as he would a landscape in paintings of the 1940’s. The present work shows the Portico of ‘The Royal Technical College’, now part of The University of Salford, with a view of the park’s central statue and the city beyond; and, as with many of Lowry’s views, there is a degree of artistic licence present. Lowry knew the College well, he painted a similar view from a lower viewpoint in 1927, Peel Park (The Lowry), and a drawing from the opposite angle View from a window of the Royal Technical College, 1924 (Salford Museum and Art Gallery).

A comparison between the 1927 painting and our work shows the development in terms of colour composition and in the application of the paint, this latter quality being an integral and vital part of Lowry’s artistic process. This painting shows the artist’s brighter and more optimistic post-war palette; there remains the aged white ground of old but here over layered with thick bright white impasto. The figures are cursorily rendered but animated, full of movement and interaction, and a tribute to the artist’s ability to convey so much with such economy of brushwork.

A Lancashire Town

Signed and dated, lower left: L.S. LOWRY 1963

Oil on canvas

22 x 26 in – 55.8 x 66 cm

Provenance:

Lefevre Gallery, London; Severn Farming Foundation, UK (cat.306); MacConnal-Mason Gallery, London; Private collection, UK Exhibited:

London, Lefevre Gallery, Recent Paintings by L.S. Lowry, 4 June – 4 July 1964, no.12, illustrated; Belfast, Belfast Arts Council Gallery, L.S. Lowry, 5 – 22 May 1971, no.28; London, MacConnal-Mason Gallery, L.S. Lowry, 14 November – 11 December 2012, no.17

The contrast with the grim industrial scenes of the 1920’s and 1930’s could not be greater in this composition. The last vestiges of an industrial heritage appear in the form of a smoking chimney and in an echo of the stage like compositions of an earlier age the subject is framed by an old mill building to the right, and trees and modern cooling towers to the left. The terraced housing stands in serried ranks and the church in the centre is one seen in many of Lowry’s works, including A Country Road. The palette is considerably brighter, the clean whites of the foreground reflecting a new world, an absence of smoke, smog and grit to go with a dearth of industry. Instead of workers hurrying to the mills, the painting is thronged with children and mothers; again with gestures to the past in the older man crossing the road in the foreground and the covered cart which appears in other compositions of the 1960’s.

Faithful to his subject at a time when Pop Art and abstract paintings were coming to the fore in a rapidly changing society, Lowry remains one of the great figures in 20th Century narrative and figurative painting.

A Country Road

Signed and dated, lower left: L.S. LOWRY 1963 Oil on board

14½ x 9½ in – 36.8 x 24 cm

Provenance:

Lefevre Gallery, London, 1966; Private collection, UK; MacConnal-Mason Gallery, London; Private collection, UK

Exhibited:

London, Lefevre Gallery, L S Lowry, May-June 1967, no.32

The 1960’s saw Lowry producing an increasing number of small paintings, both landscapes and seascapes. His frequent visits to the North East were very productive but he continued to source subjects closer to his home in Mottram in Longdendale, a village at the foot of the High Peak District in Derbyshire. Lowry was a great rambler, his friend Philip Robertson lived in the town of Glossop in the Peak District and Lowry was an inveterate recorder of places he visited. It is likely that A Country Road is a view in a Pennine town or a composite of such, the church spire certainly resembles that of St. James in Glossop. The lane and village are seen from an aerial perspective levelling out the steepness of the lane up which the boys and dog are walking. The two boys in front conversing one to another, the act of conversing conveyed with such subtlety, a mere fleck of impasto, a minute brushstroke bringing them to life, the third figure, a dog at his heels plods up the hill eyes downcast.

The board is heavily layered and textured in white overlaid with the pale greens of the fields, the pinks, greys and ochres of the buildings and scraped away along the line of the stone walls, the black flecked with brown. The effect in the sky of the thickly sculpted paint conveys the movement of clouds presaging rain.

A House

Signed and dated, lower left: L S LOWRY 1963 Oil on panel

17 x 12 in – 43.2 x 30.5 cm

Provenance:

Alex. Reid & Lefevre Ltd., London; Private collection, UK

Lowry is rightly considered one of the great painters of crowds, yet ironically a principle theme of his work is isolation. This is physically evident in the present work as what looks to be a terraced house stands alone. This is further emphasised by the stark tonal contrast between black and white.

Following the Second World War much of Lowry’s work was based away from industrial Northern cities, concentrating instead on rural landscapes and the coast. Many such paintings were entirely devoid of human presence with large, featureless, monochrome areas depicting land, sea or sky. This is similar to the apparent void surrounding the house in the present work, with the only background elements being a cart and the barely discernible outline of a building. This vaguely surreal composition is enhanced by the central figure of a man, staring directly at the viewer in a confrontational and accusatory pose. The combination of such disparate elements are undoubtedly unsettling but, much like the poetry of his contemporary Philip Larkin, there is a profound honesty in their unsanitised representation of life. It is an attitude well summed up by the artist when explaining his reason for painting, “It was the only thing I had to do. I worked to get rid of the time, even now I work for something to do. Painting is a wonderful way of getting rid of the days”.

Old Shot Tower, Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Signed and dated, lower right: L.S. LOWRY 1965 Oil on canvas

16 x 20 in – 40.6 x 50.8 cm

Provenance:

Private collection, UK; MacConnal-Mason Gallery, London; Private collection, UK

Exhibited:

Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Stone Gallery, Recent Drawings and Paintings by L.S. Lowry, March – April 1967, no.3; London, MacConnal-Mason Gallery, L.S. Lowry, 14 November – 11 December 2012, no.19

From 1960 Lowry was to be a frequent visitor to the North East. Amongst his wide circle of friends were Tony Ellis and his wife with whom he stayed at Barnard Castle in Co. Durham. Tony Ellis had been keeper at Salford Art Gallery before moving in 1958 to the Bowes Museum. In the 1960s Lowry visited Middlesbrough with his friend and fellow painter Sheila Fell; he owned a number of her landscapes. Other close friends were Ronald and Phyllis Marshall who had opened the Stone Gallery in Newcastle in 1958, Lowry met them in 1960 and then from 1962 when he visited their gallery and became firm friends and in 1965 a part owner of the gallery. He held three exhibitions at the Stone Gallery, in 1964, 1967 and 1968. Lowry roamed far and wide in the North East sometimes accompanied by his friend Philip Robertson, also a painter from Glossop near Lowry’s home in Mottram in Longdendale. Robertson would join him from 1965 for two weeks each year at the Seaburn Hotel in Sunderland. In 1965 Robertson and Lowry went sketching in Newcastle, the result for Lowry being Old Chapel, NewcastleUpon-Tyne (Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne) and he painted Shot Tower the same year based on drawings that he had made in 1964, the year of his first exhibition at the Stone Gallery. This Shot Tower was a Newcastle landmark, built in 1796 for the Elswick Lead works on the banks of the Tyne, it features in Joseph Mallord William Turner’s View of Newcastle (c.1823).

Having largely retreated from the painting of industrial scenes, it is perhaps not too fanciful to suggest that coming across an ancient legacy of industry might have reignited Lowry’s interest. But it is an atmosphere of abandonment that Lowry conveys in the composition, the smokeless chimneys, the open gate and two elongated figures standing in the middle of the road, back to back. This is just a remnant of Britain’s industrial heritage and, ironically the tower was demolished just a few years later. The painting itself was exhibited at the Stone Gallery in 1967, Lowry’s penultimate exhibition of new paintings.

Biographical chronology of L.S. Lowry

1895-1904

Laurence Stephen Lowry born in Manchester, 1 November. Only child of R. S. Lowry an Estate Agent and Elizabeth Hobson. The family lived in Rusholme, a suburb of Manchester.

1895-1904 Educated at Victoria Park School, Manchester. On leaving school he attended the private painting classes of William Fitz in Moss Side, Manchester.

1905-1915

Studied drawing and painting at Manchester, Municipal College of Art.

1909 Moved with his parents from Rusholme to 117 Station Road, Pendlebury in Salford.

1915-1920 Began to develop his interest in the industrial scene. During this period he also attended drawing and painting classes at the Salford School of Art and continued to do so, infrequently, until 1925. His art school associations thus continue over a period of some twenty years.

1926-1930 During this period he exhibited in open exhibitions in Manchester and the Paris Salon. An Accident was bought by the Manchester City Art Gallery. This was the first of his paintings to be acquired by a public art gallery. Commissioned to illustrate A Cotswold Book by Harold Timperley.

1932 His father died. First exhibited at Manchester Academy of Fine Arts and London, Royal Academy.

1934 Elected member of the Royal Society of British Artists.

1936 Six of his paintings were shown in a mixed exhibition at London, Arlington Gallery.

1938 Chance discovery by A. J. McNeill Reid who saw some of his paintings while visiting the framers, James Bourlet & Sons Ltd.

1939 First one-man exhibition at the Alex Reid & Lefevre Gallery. Since then he has exhibited there on some thirteen occasions. Dwellings, Orshall Lane, Salford purchased by London, Tate Gallery. In October his mother died.

1941 An exhibition of the artist’s work was presented at the Salford City Museum and Art Gallery.

1943 One-man exhibition at Liverpool, Bluecoat Chambers.

1945 Made Honorary M. A. University of Manchester.

1948 Elected member of London Group. Moves from Pendlebury, Salford, to The Elms, Stalybridge Road, Mottram-in-Longendale, Cheshire, where he since lived. October: one-man exhibition at the Mid-day Studios, Manchester, where he exhibited regularly with the Manchester Group from 1946-1951.

1951 July - August: retrospective exhibition at the Salford City Art Gallery.

1952 First exhibition at the Manchester, Crane Gallery. This gallery, under the direction of Mr. Andras Kalman, was the first commercial gallery outside London to show Lowry’s work. Further exhibitions were held there in 1955 and 1958. Now the London, Crane Kalman Gallery, it has shown his work on a number of occasions. Lowry is represented in the New York, Collection of the of the Museum of Modern Art.

1955 Elected Associate of the Royal Academy. An exhibition of his work held at the Wakefield City Art Gallery and Manchester, Crane Gallery.

1959 June – July: retrospective exhibition at the Manchester City Art Gallery. In mixed exhibition New York, Robert Osborne Gallery.

1960 April - May: exhibition of drawings and paintings at the Altrincham Art Gallery.

1961 Given Honorary Doctorate University of Manchester.

1962 Elected Royal Academician. September – October: retrospective exhibition at Sheffield, Graves Art Gallery.

1964 In November, an exhibition in his honour was held at Eccles, Monks Hall Museum. 25 Contemporary artists including Barbara Hepworth, Hichens, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Pasmore, Duncan Grant and John Piper, took part. Tributes to Lowry were written by Professor Gombrich, Sir Kenneth Clark and Sir Herbert Read and The Halle Orchestra gave a special concert in Manchester to celebrate the occasion of his seventy-seventh birthday.

1965 June: received the Freedom of the City of Salford.

1966/7 Travelling retrospective exhibition organised by the Arts Council of Great Britain visited the Sunderland Art Gallery; Manchester, Whitworth Art Gallery; Bristol, City Art Gallery and London, Tate Gallery. On 10th July 1967 the G.P.O. issue a Lowry stamp reproducing a mill scene.

1968 Exhibited Crane Kalman Gallery The Loneliness of L. S. Lowry.

1971 Exhibition organised by Belfast, Northern Ireland Arts Council. Since 1971 the artist lived quietly at Mottram taking occasionally visits to the Seaburn Hotel at Sunderland where he liked to stay for two or three weeks at a time. During this period he painted infrequently and showed mainly at the Royal Academy Summer exhibition although he was not represented at the 1975 exhibition.

1975 Received Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Liverpool University. Exhibition L. S. Lowry – A Selection of Paintings, London, Crane Kalman Gallery.

1976 Lowry died 23rd February aged 88. September – November major retrospective exhibition at the London, Royal Academy 330,000 people visited the exhibition.1977 Retrospective Exhibition, Edinburgh, Scottish Arts Council. BBC Film L. S. Lowry, I’m Just a Simple Man an obituary tribute. Permanent exhibition at Salford Art Gallery expanded by a further 67 works from the artist’s estate.

1987 L. S. Lowry: A Centenary Tribute at Crane Kalman Gallery, 40 paintings. ‘The Centenary Exhibition’, Salford Art Gallery

1988 Lowry, London, Barbican Art Gallery Exhibition. Some new critics are hostile to Lowry.

1994 Exhibition Crane Kalman Gallery ‘A Selection of Masterpieces’.

2000 The Lowry opens in Salford, an Arts Centre dedicated to his memory.

Lowry

MACCONNAL-MASON

MACCONNAL-MASON

Laurence Stephen Lowry RA, RBA, LG, NS

FOREWORD

Laurence Stephen Lowry RA, RBA, LG, NS (1887-1976)

The Street Orator

Excavating in Manchester

Industrial Landscape

(The Football Match)

Provenance:

The Playground

The Canal at Worsley

Provenance:

Three Figures

The Orator

St. Paul’s School, Bennett Street

Derbyshire

Peel Park, Salford

Provenance:

A Lancashire Town

A Country Road

A House

Signed and dated, lower left: L S LOWRY 1963 Oil on panel

Provenance:

Old Shot Tower, Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Biographical chronology of L.S. Lowry