L. S. Lowry

L. S. Lowry (1887-1976), British painter, whose stylized, idiosyncratic paintings of industrial scenes in the north of England made him a household name. His popularity was enhanced by his public image as an ordinary Lancashire man.

Born in Stretford, Manchester, on November 1, 1887, he worked for most of his life for the Pall Mall Property Company in Manchester. His artistic training was limited to evening classes at the Municipal College of Art in Manchester (1905-1915), under the French painter Adolphe Valette, and at the Salford School of Art (1915-1925). From the late 1910s he developed his interest in industrical scenes, which were inspired in particular by his surroundings in Pendlebury, Salford, where he lived between 1909 and 1948. Although he exhibited in Manchester, London, and Paris before World War II, it was only after the war that he became well known, even becoming the subject of a television programme in 1957.

Lowry's fame derived mainly from such urban scenes as Dwellings, Ordsall Lane, Salford (1927), which was bought in 1939 by the Tate Gallery in London. While some of his works refer to specific streets and buildings, The Pond (1950, Tate Gallery) is a semi-imaginary “composite” townscape. In this painting Lowry has characteristically reduced the people to stick-like figures surrounded by enormous factories and smoking chimneys. Despite his obsession with industrial towns, Lowry occasionally painted portraits and even seascapes, exemplified by The Sea (1963, Salford Art Gallery).

Although Lowry's highly individual style had little influence on other artists, his work fascinated a wider public and became very valuable. He even inspired a successful popular song after his death on February 23, 1976, at Glossop, Derbyshire.