Laurence Stephen Lowry was born in Rusholme, Manchester, in November 1887, the only child of Irish-born R S Lowry and Elizabeth Lowry (née Hobson). He attended a local school in Victoria Park, but took private lessons from William Fitz, before starting work as a clerk for a firm of chartered accountants in 1904 ... moreJan. 17: Added extensive scans and review of L.S. Lowry: A Biography Paperback (1999)
Feb. 15: Details and scans added of the Lowry Tate Britain exhibition poster now no longer made. 1 new and sealed one in stock. View here
Sept. 13: Details and scans of the Lowry Tate Britain exhibition. View smartphone page here
Sept. 13: Scanned an adorable Lowry on general display at Tate Britain. View smartphone page here with amazing paintings from other artist Review.
Hillside in Wales & Industrial Landscape Postcards Added. Purchases of these cards help with the running costs of the Lowry pages.
Coming From The Mill & A Football Match Postcards Added
VE Day & The Lake Postcards Added
Blitzed Life & Bandstand, Peel Park Postcards Added
A Street Scene & Early Morning Postcards Added
Biggest Lowry Book Ever Reviewed | Pitmen Painters Book Review
Albert Finney Letter on Lowry and Signed Postcard - Smartphones Page Added
Perspectives: Looking For Lowry is on ITV1 in the UK on Easter Sunday 2011 at 10.15pm. Ian McKellen presents a documentary about the life and work of the much-loved British artist LS Lowry. The programme illuminates Lowry's extraordinary vision, and includes interviews with those who knew him and others who have been inspired by his unique observations of Britain, together with an examination of his powerful artistic legacy in our post-industrial age. With contributions from Paula Rego, Noel Gallagher, Jeffrey Archer, Carol Ann Lowry and Gillian Lynne. SUB. More on it and catch up on ITV Player can be found here
© ESTATE OF L.S. LOWRY
From 1905-1915 he attended drawing and painting classes at the Municipal College of Art (later Manchester College of Art, and now part of Manchester Metropolitan University), where he was tutored by Adolphe Valette.
Lowry moved to Pendlebury in Salford with his parents in 1909, where he was to live for nearly 40 years. During this time he attended art classes at Salford School of Art, developing an interest in the urban and industrial landscape. He exhibited with the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts from 1919, as well as entering paintings in the Paris Salon
By the early 1930s he was exhibiting at the Royal Academy in London. He was awarded an honorary MA at Manchester University in 1945, and Doctor of Letters in 1961, elected to the Royal Academy in 1962, and given freedom of the City of Salford in 1965. He lived in Mottram until he died in 1976 - a death marked by unprecedented homage by the 'ordinary people' of Manchester.
L.S. Lowry is unquestionably one of the most celebrated British artists and his unique contribution to recording the period, culture and landscape of industrial Salford and Manchester is without parallel. His work is a most distinctive and comprehensive record of the pre and post World War Two northern industrial town.
Many people associate Lowry with “matchstick men”, but he is known to have produced over 10,000 works, ranging from finished oil paintings to hastily drawn sketches. The local industrial scene was his most frequent subject but he also painted seascapes and portraits. He was a great humorist and had intense insight into human nature, characterising it without sentiment.
Later in his life he concentrated on producing paintings of figures either singly or in groups, invariably against a white background. He also produced thousand of pencil drawings during his lifetime, these are now very collectable and the best ones are incredibly detailed
Lowry died without a registered doctor, leading the galleries a merry dance. Hoping to inherit a few paintings in his will, they courted him in his old age only to find he had left them all to a girl, also called Lowry, who had written him a letter years before, asking how she could become an artist.Lowry's status as one of the major British artists of the 20th Century was reinforced when the painting Going To The Match was sold at Auction for a record £1.9 million to the Manchester-based Professional Footballers Association.
Manchester's premier gallery, The Lowry Centre in Salford Quays, now holds a major collection of his work.
BIOG. II Laurence Stephen Lowry was born in Manchester in November 1887, the only child of Irish-born parents. From 1905-1915 L.S. Lowry attended drawing and painting classes at the Municipal College of Art. He moved to Salford with his parents in 1909, where he was to live for nearly 40 years. During this time he attended art classes at Salford School of Art, developing an interest in the urban and industrial landscape.
Laurence Stephen Lowry exhibited with the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts from 1919. He exhibited at and was elected to the Royal Academy in 1962, and given freedom of the City of Salford in 1965. L.S. Lowry is unquestionably one of the most celebrated British artists and his unique contribution to recording the period, culture and landscape of the industrial north is without parallel
Among his collectors and admirers is the actor Albert Finney. He grew up in the area and knew the landscapes Lowry painted.
TRIVIA Lowry died just a few months before a major exhibition of his work was held at London's Royal Academy. It drew more than 350,000 visitors, breaking all Academy's records.In 1968 he was offered a knighthood but turned it down.
He bought paintings by Honore Daumier and Lucian Freud among others, and by Rossetti.
The Barbican exhibition in 1988 exhibited some of the deeply private, erotically tinted images that will be seem in the ITV1 documentary Perspectives: Looking For Lowry on Easter Sunday 2011. The documentary will also feature an interview with Carol Ann Lowry. Though not related, she was 13 when her mother suggested she write to the great man for advice on how to become an artist. He was 70. Eventually he replied, formed a friendship that was part uncle and niece, part mentor and pupil. and in 1976 when he died of pneumonia, aged 88, he bequeathed his entire £300,000 estate to her, together with a substantial collection of hs own paintings - themselves worth a fortune.
The £106 million arts centre, The Lowry, opened in Salford Quats in 1999.Tate Britain has 23 Lowrys in its basement!
Lowry autographs, rare prints and more @ ebay.co.uk (direct link to prints) - just checked and a bigger selection than i have seen everywhere else
KEY DATES
Award - 1975
L.S Lowry was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Salford and the same degree by the University of Liverpool
Award - 1967
L. S Lowry's painting- Coming out of school- was the stamp of the highest denomination in a series issued by the Post Office depicting great British artists
Award - 1965
He was given freedom of the City
Award - 1961
L. S Lowry was awarded an honorary Master of Arts from Doctors of Letters
Award - 1945
L.S Lowry was awarded an honorary Master of Arts from the University of Manchester
BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONOLOGY OF THE ARTIST
1887
Laurence Stephen Lowry born in Manchester, 1 November. Only child of R. S. Lowry, an estate agent, and Elizabeth Hobson. The family lived in Rusholme, a suburb of Manchester.
1895-1904
Educated at Victoria Park School, Manchester. On leaving he attended the private painting classes of William Fitz in Moss Side, Manchester.
1904
Joined the firm of This. Aldred & Son, Chartered Accountants, 88 Mosley Street, Manchester, where he worked as a Clerk.
1905-15
Studied drawing and painting at the Muncipal College of Art, Manchester.
1907
Joined the General Accident, Fire & Life Assurance Corporation, 20 Cross Street, Manchester, as a Claims Clerk.
1910
Began work as a Rent Collector and Clerk with The Pall Mall Property Company Ltd., Manchester.
1915-20
Began to develop his interest in the industrial scene. During this period he also attended drawing and painting classes at the Salford School of Art, and continued to do so, infrequently, until 1925. His art school associations thus continued over a period of some twenty years.
1926-30
During this period he exhibited in open exhibitions in Manchester and at the Paris Salon. An Accident was bought by the City Art Gallery, Manchester. This was the first of his paintings to be acquired by a public art gallery. Commissioned to illustrate A Cotswold Book by Harold Timperley (Jonathan Cape, London, 1931).
1932
His father died. First exhibited at the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts. First exhibited at the Royal Academy.
1934
Elected a member of the Royal Society of British Artists.
Lowry with the Stockport Viaduct
Copyright Unknown?
1936
Six of his paintings were shown in a mixed exhibition at the Arlington Gallery, London.
1938
Chance discovery by A. J. McNeil Reid who saw some of his paintings while visiting the framers, James Bourlet & Sons Ltd.
1939
First one-man exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery. He exhibited there on some thirteen occasions. Dwellings, Ordsall Lane, Salford purchased by the Tate Gallery. In October his mother died.
1941
An exhibition of the artist's work was presented at the City Museum and Art Gallery, Salford.
1943
One-man exhibition at the Bluecoat Chambers, Liverpool.
1945
Made Honorary M.A., University of Manchester.
1948
Elected a member of the London Group. Moes from Pendlebury, Salford, to The Elms, Stalybrudge Road, Mottram-in-Longendale, Cheshire, where he lived until he died. October: one-man exhibition at the Mid-day Studios, Manchester, where he exhibited regularly with the Manchester Group from 1946-1951.
1951
July-August: retrospective exhibition at the City Art Gallery, Salford.
1952
First exhibition at the Crane Gallery, Manchester. This gallery, under the direction of Mr. Andras Kalman, was the first commercial gallery outside London to show Lowry's work. Further exhibitions were held there in 1955 and 1958. Turning into the Crane Kalman Gallery, London, it showed his work on a number of occasions. Lowry is represented in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Retired on Full Pension from The Pall Mall Company Limited, Manchester, with whom he began work as a Rent Collector and Clerk in 1910. At the time of his retirement he had risen to the rank of Chief Cashier to the firm.
1955
Made an Associate of the Royal Academy. An exhibition of his work held at the Wakefield City Art Gallery.
1959
June-July: retrospective exhibition at the City Art Gallery, Manchester. Exhibited, Robert Osbourne Gallery, New York.
1960
April-May: exhibition of drawings and paintings at the Altrincham Art Gallery.
1961
Made Honoray LL.D., University of Manchester.
1962
Elected Royal Academician. September-October: retrospective exhibition at the Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield.
1964
In November, an exhibition in his honour was held at the Monks Hall Museum, Eccles. Twenty-five contemporary artists, including Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Duncan Grant and John Piper, took part. The Halle Orchestra gave a special concert in Manchester to celebrate the occasion of his seventy-seventh birthday.
1965
June: received the Freedom of the City of Salford.
1966-7
Travelling retrospective exhibition organised by the Arts Council of Great Britain visited the Sunderland Art Gallery; the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; The City Art Gallery, Bristol; and the Tate Gallery, London. On 10 July 1967 the G.P.O. issued a Lowry stamp reproducing a mill scene.
1971
Exhibition organised by the Northern Ireland Arts Council in Belfast.From 1971 the artist lived quietly at Mottram making occasional visits to the Seaburn Hotel in Sunderland where he liked to stay for two or three weeks at a time. During this period he painted infrequently and showed mainly at the Royal Academy Summer exhibition, although he ws not represented in the 1975 Exhibition.
1975
Made Hon. D.Lit. by the University of Salford.
Made Hon. D.Lit. by the University of Liverpool.
1975
On 23 February, 1976 the artist died at Woods Hospital, Glossop, in his 88th year.
Source: L.S. Lowry RA, 1887-1976: [catalogue of an exhibition held at the Royal Academy], 4 September to 14 November [1976]
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