Laurence Stephen Lowry
and his “matchstick men”
self portrait 1925
Laurence Stephen
Stephen Lowry (November 1, 1887–February 23, 1976) was an
English artist born on Barrett Street, Stretford, Lancashire. Many of his
drawings and paintings depict Salford and surrounding areas, including
Pendlebury where he lived and worked for over forty years at 117 Station
Road, opposite St. Mark's Roman Catholic Church.
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 painted in drab colours and
peopled with many human figures (matchstick men) He also painted
mysterious unpopulated landscapes, brooding portraits, and the secret
'marionette' works (the latter only found after his death).
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Man looking at something”
The stranger”
(typical “matchstick men”)
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 opinion of the galleries that have organised
retrospectives of his works! A large collection of Lowry's work is on
permanent public display in a purpose built art gallery on Salford Quays,
(Manchester) appropriately named, The Lowry.
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“The Lowry”, Salford Quays,
His family called him 'Laurie'. It was a difficult birth and his mother Elizabeth,
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". Lowry's father Robert, a
clerk for the Jacob Earnshaw and Son Property Company, was a withdrawn
and introverted man whom Lowry once described as "a cold fish" and "[the
sort of man who] realised he had a life to live and did his best to get through
it."
“ Going to the Match” Lowry was a supporter of Manchester United football
team.
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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, with aspirations
of becoming a concert pianist. She was an irritable, nervous woman who had
been brought up by a stern father to expect high standards and 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 often maintained in
interviews conducted later in his life that he had an unhappy childhood,
growing up in a repressive family atmosphere. Although it is true 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 customarily faded into the background as an unobtrusive
presence.
“The Fever Van” is a distinctive work. While most of his paintings of the
urban scene are predominantly atmospheric, here there is a story at the
heart of the picture. An ambulance has drawn up outside a house to collect a
fever patient.
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After leaving Grafton House Public School, Lowry signed himself up for
private art lessons under local artist Reginald Barber. In 1905 he managed to
secure a place at the Manchester Municipal College of Art, where he studied
under the French Impressionist artist Adolphe Valette.In 1915 he moved to
the Salford School of Art where he was to continue studying until 1925. Here,
he developed his interest in industrial landscapes and began to establish his
style.
Coming Home from
from the Mill
The subjects for his paintings were on his doorstep. In later life he recalled
this as a sort of vision. "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.
His father died in 1932, leaving debts. His mother, subject to neurosis and
depression, became bedridden and now Lowry had to care for her. She was a
demanding patient and he painted from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. after his mother
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had fallen asleep. Many of the 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 Van Gogh's work Lowry saw at the Manchester
Art Gallery in 1931. He frequently expressed regret that he received little
recognition as an artist until the year 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, eventually becoming an official War Artist
in 1943. In 1953 he was appointed Official Artist at the coronation of
Elizabeth II.
two self portraits from the soso-called ”horrible heads” series
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, Cheshire. Although he considered the house
ugly and uncomfortable, he stayed there until his death almost thirty years
later.
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The Elms, Lowry’s home .
Lowry at work
Lowry never married. In later life, starting in the 1950s, he would often
spend holidays at the Seaburn Hotel at Seaburn in Sunderland, County
Durham, 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 cotton mills of Lancashire.
Lowry is remembered in the city as a kindly old man, always wrapped up in
his 'mac' even at the height of summer, who kept himself to himself. He was
once asked what he did with his old suits. "Wear them", came the reply! He
certainly wore them to paint in, wiping the brushes on his lapels and sleeves.
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AT THE SEASSIDE
The Promenade, Hartlepool
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).
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V.E. Day celebrations
celebrations
Lowry may have had Asperger's Syndrome (the high-functioning form of
autism) but this remains a contentious diagnosis that is not shared by those
who 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 chime
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 he made new friends throughout his adult life.
He often bought works from young artists he admired, such as James
Lawrence Isherwood whose 'Woman with Black Cat', hung on his studio wall..
He kept on going friendships with some of these artists. 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 fellow-artist Sheila Fell has said: "He
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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."
Some of the most difficult pictures to like are of solitary figures and down
and outs. "I feel more strongly about these people than I ever did about the
industrial scene.” He said. “They are real people, sad people. I'm attracted to
sadness and there are some very sad things. I feel like 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. One
unverifiable anecdote 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 railway 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. However, he was unfailingly polite to the
residents of Mottram, who respected him and his privacy; he used the bus to
get about the area in his retirement. A bronze statue of him has been erected
at the traffic lights in that village.
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Lowry’s statue a the bus stop, MottramMottram-InIn-Longdendale, Cheshire
Lowry retired from the Pall Mall Property Company in 1952 on his 65th
birthday (McLean, 1978). 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, Cumberland (where
Geoffrey Bennett was the manager at the 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.
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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, Lancashire some months later,
and befriended the family. His friendship with Carol Ann Lowry was to last
the rest of his life.
He died of pneumonia at The Woods Hospital in Glossop, Derbyshire on 23
February 1976 aged 88. He was buried in Chorlton's Southern Cemetery in
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.
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.[15] In 1975 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of
Letters by the University of Salford and the same degree by the University of
Liverpool. In 1964, the art world celebrated his 77th birthday 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 on his official Christmas card. Lowry's painting was the stamp of
highest denomination in a series issued by the Post Office depicting great
British artists in 1968.
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“The Pond”
Lowry declined an OBE in 1955, a CBE in 1961 and a knighthood in 1968. He
holds the record for the number of awards declined.
Sources
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._S._Lowry
www.matchstickmen.org.uk/
www.thelowry.com/lslowry/lslowryslife.html
www.visitcumbria.com/lowry.htm
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