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L.S.Lowry

By David Tatham

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Published: 26Nov2009
Word count: 723
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Lawrence Stephen Lowry (November 1, 1887 February 23, 1976) was an English artist born in Barratt Street, Old Trafford, Manchester. Most of his pictures depict Salford, where he lived and worked for over thirty years.

He 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).Early life Lowry was born the only child of Robert Stephens Lowry (1857 -1932), an Estate & Land Agent, and Elizabeth (nÃ©e Hobson), a concert pianist and piano teacher in the middle class suburb of Victoria Park in Rusholme. 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. Exhibiting He first exhibited in 1919 with two paintings at the Annual Exhibition the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts and showed widely throughout the 1920s although his work was often dismissed as amateurish and childlike. In 1921 he exhibited his work in the offices of the Manchester architect Roland Thomasson and sold his first picture, a pastel entitled The Lodging House. He entered paintings in the Paris Salon, with the New English Art Club (from 1927 to 1936), in Dublin, Manchester and Japan.

Lowry illustrated A Cotswold Book written by H. W. Timperley in 1930 with twelve drawings made soon after he held a solo exhibition of drawings at the Round House gallery at Manchester University. The book was published in 1931.

In 1938, Alexander J. McNeill Reid, a director of the Lefevre Gallery in London, saw several of Lowry's paintings awaiting framing at James Bourlet & Sons Limited (now the transport division of Sotheby's auction house). He inquired after the artist and in 1939 a one-man exhibition of his paintings was held at the Lefevre Gallery (some books on Lowry call it the Reid & Lefevre Gallery). That exhibition sold sixteen paintings including one to the Tate Gallery (for just £15). It came as a very pleasant surprise to Lowry, who said that the show gave him more pleasure than anything else in art. The (Reid &) Lefevre Gallery showed 15 solo exhibitions of his work between 1945 and 1979.

He first exhibited at the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts (MAFA) in 1932, was elected a member in 1934 and continued to exhibit there annually until 1972. In 1936 Salford City Art Gallery bought its first Lowry painting from the MAFA exhibition; it was A Street Scene painted in 1928. The city held its first one man show of his work in 1941 and opened a permanent collection of his work in 1958. He became a member of the Royal Society of British Artists in 1934. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Show in 1932 and was elected an Associate in 1955 and a full Royal Academician in 1962.

Lowry and some other members of the Manchester Arts Club formed a sub-group called the Manchester Group, which exhibited at the Midday Studios, Moseley Street, Manchester and elsewhere in the city until 1956.

Retrospective exhibitions of his work include those at Salford City Art Gallery as part of the 1951 Festival of Britain, the Manchester City Art Gallery in 1959, the Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield in 1962, and at the Stone Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1964. In 1965 the Arts Council curated a touring retrospective exhibition that ended with a six-week show at the Tate Gallery in 1967. The Royal Academy, London held a posthumous tribute in 1976.

Lowry, investment art for 2009. Please see http://www.lowry.co.uk for the country's largest collection of signed limited edition prints for sale by the British artist L.S.Lowry.

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