LS Lowry was a 20th-century English artist most famous for his paintings of life in the bleak industrial areas of northern England, done in muted colors and containing lots of small figures or "matchstick men". His painting style was very much his own, and he struggled much of his career against perceptions that he was a self-taught, part-time, naïve artist.
Laurence Stephen Lowry was born on 1 November 1887. He never studied at art college full-time, but did attend evening art classes for many years. It's known that in 1905 he studied "antique and freehand drawing", that he studied at the Manchester Academy of Fine Art and the Salford Royal Technical College, and was still going to classes in the 1920s1.
Lowry worked most of his life as a rent collector for the Pall Mall Property Company, retiring at 65. He tended to keep quiet about his "daytime job", to reduce the impression that he wasn't a serious artist. Lowry painted after work and only after his mother, who he looked after, had gone to bed.
"Lowry kept this occupation secret to avoid being known as a 'Sunday painter', often painting his canvases late into the night."2
"It was not until his death that the public learned of the artist's unique industrial vision having been developed as he traversed Manchester on foot as a rent collector, committing wry and sundry observations to notebook or memory before their working into paintings in evenings and on weekends.3
Eventually, Lowry did achieve critical acclaim, starting with his first London exhibition in 1939. In 1945 he was awarded an honorary Master of Arts by the University of Manchester. In 1962 he was elected an Royal Academician. In 1964, the year Lowry turned 77, the British prime minister Harold Wilson used one of Lowry's paintings (The Pond) as his official Christmas card, and in 1968 Lowry's painting Coming Out of School was part of a series of stamps depicting great British artists. A few months after his death, on 23 February 1976, a retrospective exhibition of his paintings opened at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
In 1978 the song Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs, written as a tribute to Lowry, became a number one chart hit for the duo Brian and Michael. (Note: the song actually says, "matchstalk men", not "matchstick".)
Next: What was Lowry's painting style?
References:
1. LS Lowry - His Life and Career, The Lowry website, accessed 2 October 2010.
2. Object of the Month: Station Approach by LS Lowry RA, Royal Academy of the Arts, accessed 2 October 2010.
3. Factory at Widness by LS Lowry, The Press, 13 October 2004
