A Trip to Salford:
visiting the world of L.S. Lowry
Think
of Manchester, and you think of football, and factories. In fact, there is a
thriving arts and cultural scene in Manchester, and echoing a global trend
in docklands redevelopment there has been the recent construction of a major
arts and entertainment complex in
Salford Quays.
The complex, located in an area
long considered one of the bleakest in Manchester, has been named the Lowry
Centre, after one of Salford’s favourite sons, the artist Laurence
Stephen (LS) Lowry. As well as theatres, concert halls and restaurants,
the Lowry Centre Art Gallery is home to an excellent collection of local and
contemporary art including a comprehensive permanent collection of paintings
by LS Lowry.
To be honest, I hadn’t heard of
Lowry until moving to Manchester, where he is very well known as one of
their most famous local artists. My friend Gordon had been a fan of his work
for some time, and when he came up north to visit me, he insisted we take a
trip to the Lowry Gallery.
“Matchstick men!”
Gordon kept singing from the back of the minicab all the way to Salford
Quays, “...and matchstick cats and dogs!” – this had been a
hit
song by the duo Brian Burke and Michael Colman, commemorating the style
of LS Lowry after his death in the late 1970s.
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Matchstick Men!
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Life in Salford: football and
factories
Lowry was born in 1887 and was a
prolific painter of life in Salford all his adult life. Lowry’s
interest in the urban and industrial landscape captured something quite
unique. His signature “matchstick men” (marching to work in the factory, or
gathered at the football ground) are indeed simplistic but in their sheer
numbers make up a crowd heaving with life and movement.
What I found quite amazing was the
way in which Lowry’s paintings of crowds or busy streets appear to give you
a distance and vantage point that Lowry could never have had except for in
his imagination.
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An Accident (1926)
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Lowry’s father had emigrated from
Ireland, and as a young man, Lowry worked as a clerk with a firm of
accountants while attending the Municipal College of Art. He lived with his
parents, and was to continue doing so for nearly forty years until the death
of his mother.
Despite painting in Manchester almost exclusively, Lowry was
a much celebrated British artist during his lifetime and received numerous
honours (including election to
the Royal Academy) for his contribution to
recording of life in the industrial northwest of England.
One of his most
famous paintings, Going to The Match, sold for 1.9 million pounds.
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Lowry’s work is incredibly
evocative of working class life in the industrial northwest, and the Lowry
Centre Gallery strives to show this, with big windows all through the
complex that look out onto chimneystacks and grey brick buildings that
inevitably mirror an equally grey sky. All around you is Lowryland.
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Industrial Panorama
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Although best known for Salford
scenes of life and labour under dreary skies, I was also impressed by
Lowry’s portraiture. He painted his subjects with a warmth that is obvious.
There are many portraits that feature the recognisable face of a certain
woman. As Lowry was never married, her identity is something of mystery –
some suggest she was his mother (there have also been suggestions of an
Oedipal obsession). Others suggest she was Carol-Ann Lowry, a girl who had
written to him, excited when she found out she shared a name with a famous
artist. They remained friends for years, and when Lowry died, he left his
estate to her.
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One of the paintings I liked the
most was one called “The Bedroom”, painted at the his parents’ house where
Lowry lived almost all his life, and for much of that with his bed ridden
mother. The painting reminds me so much of that famous painting of Van
Gogh’s bedroom in Arles. The surroundings are simple, functional, sufficient
– the unadorned surroundings of a man who lived alone after his mother’s
death and dedicated himself to his art.
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In retrospect, the work of LS
Lowry is a record of the end of the industrial revolution in Britain, as
well as a record of the living spirit of Manchester: factories, and football
and a rich cultural life.
The Lowry Centre is well worth a visit, and you
can read more about it as well as more about the life of LS Lowry here
http://www.thelowry.com/
To see some of his works at the MBA gallery, click
HERE
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Self-portrait, 1925
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