Лоури: Художник индустриального Севера Англии

British visual artist (1887–1976)

Laurence Stephen Lowry (/'//l//aʊ//r//i/ LAOree; 1 November 1887 – 23 February 1976) was an English artist. His drawings and paintings mainly depict Pendlebury, Greater Manchester (where he lived and worked for more than 40 years) as well as Salford and its vicinity. Lowry painted 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 He painted mysterious unpopulated landscapes, brooding portraits and the unpublished "marionette" works, which were only found after his death.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". 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.

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 at first. Later she expressed envy of her sister Mary, who had "three splendid daughters" instead of one "clumsy boy". Lowry's grandfather Frederick Lowry had immigrated 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 His father Robert worked as a clerk for the Jacob Earnshaw and Son Property Company and was a withdrawn and introverted man.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" and "(the sort of man who) realised he had a life to live and did his best to get 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. Much of Lowry's early years were spent in the leafy Manchester suburb of Victoria Park, Rusholme, but in 1909, when he was 22, due 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  "

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. 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". He also painted mysterious unpopulated landscapes, brooding portraits and the unpublished "marionette" works, which were only found after his death.

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:

In later years, Lowry spent holidays at the Seaburn Hotel in Sunderland, painting scenes of the beach and nearby ports and coal mines. He was a secretive and mischievous man who enjoyed stories irrespective of their truth. 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. 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.

Lowry retired from the Pall Mall Property Company in 1952 on his 65th birthday. In 1957 an unrelated 13 year old schoolgirl called Carol Ann Lowry 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 D. F. A.

Lowry joked about retiring from the art world, citing his lack of interest in the changing landscape. Instead, he began to focus on groups of figures and odd imaginary characters. Unknown to his friends and the public, Lowry produced a series of erotic works that were not seen until after his death. The paintings depict the mysterious "Ann" figure, who appears in portraits and sketches produced throughout his lifetime, enduring sexually charged and humiliating tortures. When these works were exhibited at the Art Council's Centenary exhibition at the Barbican in 1988, art critic Richard Dorment wrote in The Daily Telegraph that these works "reveal a sexual anxiety which is never so much as hinted at in the work of the previous 60 years." The group of erotic works, which are sometimes referred to as "the mannequin sketches" or "marionette works", are kept at the Lowry Centre and are available for visitors to see on request. Some are also brought up into the public display area on a rotation system. Manchester author Howard Jacobson has argued that the images are just part of Lowry's melancholy and tortured view of the world and that they would change the public perception of the complexity of his work if they were more widely seen.

Lowry died of pneumonia at the Woods Hospital in Glossop, Derbyshire, on 23 February 1976, aged 88. He was buried in the Southern Cemetery in Manchester, next to his parents. He left an estate valued at £298,459, and a considerable number of artworks by himself and others to Carol Ann Lowry, who, in 2001, obtained trademark protection of the artist's signature. Lowry left a cultural legacy, his works often sold for millions of pounds and inspired other artists. The Lowry art gallery in Salford Quays was opened in 2000 at a cost of £106 million; named after him, the gallery houses 55 of his paintings and 278 drawings – the world's largest collection of his work – with up to 100 on display. In January 2005, a statue of him was unveiled in Mottram in Longdendale 100 yards away from his home from 1948 until his death in 1976. The statue has been a target for vandals since it was unveiled. In 2006 the Lowry Centre in Salford hosted a contemporary dance performance inspired by his work. To mark the centenary of his birth in 1987, Royston Futter, director of the L. S. Lowry Centenary Festival, on behalf of the City of Salford and the BBC commissioned the Northern Ballet Theatre and Gillian Lynne to create a dance drama in his honour. A Simple Man was choreographed and directed by Lynne, with music by Carl Davis and starred Christopher Gable and Moira Shearer (in her last dance role). It was broadcast on BBC, for which it won a BAFTA award as the best arts programme in 1988, and also performed live on stage in November 1987. Further performances were held in London at Sadler's Wells in 1988, and again in 2009. In February 2011 a bronze statue of Lowry was installed in the basement of his favourite pub, Sam's Chop House. In 2013 a retrospective was held at the Tate Britain in London, his first there. In 2014 his first solo exhibition outside the UK was held in Nanjing, China. One of the 'houses' at Wellacre Academy in Manchester is named after him.

Lowry was awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree by the University of Manchester in 1945, and Doctor of Letters in 1961. In April 1955 Lowry was elected as an Associate Member of the Royal Academy of Arts and in April 1962 became a full Royal Academician. At the end of December of the same year his membership status evolved to that of Senior Academician having reached the age of 75. He turned down a knighthood in 1968, and appointments to the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in 1972 and 1976.

Lowry's work is held in many public and private collections. The largest collection is held by Salford City Council and displayed at The Lowry. Its collection has about 400 works. X ray analyses have revealed hidden figures under his drawings – the "Ann" figures. Going to the Match, formerly owned by the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA), is displayed at The Lowry along with a preparatory pencil sketch. The Tate Gallery in London owns 23 works. The City of Southampton owns The Floating Bridge, The Canal Bridge and An Industrial Town. His work is featured at MOMA, in New York City. The Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu in Christchurch, New Zealand has Factory at Widnes (1956) in its collection. The painting was one of the gallery's most important acquisitions of the 1950s and remains the highlight of its collection of modern British art. In the early days of his career Lowry was a member of the Manchester Group of Lancashire artists, exhibiting with them at Margo Ingham's Mid Day Studios in Manchester. He made a small painting of the Mid Day Studios which is in the collection of the Manchester City Art Gallery. During his life Lowry made about 1,000 paintings and over 8,000 drawings.

In July 2015 three works – Lady with Dogs, Darby and Joan and Crowd Scene – featured in the BBC One series Fake or Fortune?. The presenters concluded that the works were genuine, despite their weak provenance and the fact that Lowry was "probably the most faked British artist, his deceptively simple style of painting making him a soft target for forgers". An important element in the programme's assessment was Lowry's claim to have used only five colours including lead white, whereas a contemporary photograph showed that he had also used titanium white and zinc white.

The Mill, Pendlebury, a painting never publicly exhibited or featured in any book, was found in the estate of Leonard D. Hamilton, a British American researcher, after his death in 2019. Hamilton was a Manchester Grammar School boy who studied at Balliol College, Oxford, and Trinity College, Cambridge, before moving to the US in 1949. The work was listed at Christie's with an estimate of £700,000 to £1 million, and sold on 21 January 2020, to a private collector, for £2.65 million.

In March 2014 fifteen of Lowry's works, from the A. J. Thompson Collection, were auctioned at Sotheby's in London; the total sale estimate of £15 million was achieved, even though two paintings failed to reach their reserve price and were withdrawn. Thompson, owner of the Salford Express, collected only Lowry paintings, starting in 1982. The auction included the paintings Peel Park, Salford and Piccadilly Circus, London, Lowry's most expensive painting at auction to date, which fetched £5.6 million in 2011 but only £5.1 million in 2014. Lowry painted very few London scenes, and only two depict Piccadilly Circus.