Picture of the month

Press, 25 May 1984, Page 14

Picture of the month

at the Robert McDougall Art Gallery

The industrial scene was a common theme in the British painter, L. S. Lowry’s art. Throughout his career which spanned the years 1912 to 1976 he sought to record his impression of the effects of the industrial revolution on the Lancashire landscape. His paintings portray the overpowering presence of the factory on the city — dark building masses and gigantic chimneys gushing thick smoke into a brooding sky dominate his compositions. He also emphasises the dehumanising effects of the industrial revolution by painting puppetlike people hastily scurrying into the factory’s clutches. In “Factory at Widnes,” Lowry depicts three men — like three Charlie Chaplins — in bowler hats and canes walking towards a factory. Their dress suggests that they may be factory managers although their status is of little significance, for Lowry is concerned with potraying the overwhelming presence of the factory. He achieves this through his compositional arrangement. For instance, he stretches the building mass right across the picture so that it blocks the men’s' path and this creats a menacing image. Furthermore, he adds gigantic chimney stacks which tower above the men and this emphasises their smallness and vulnerability. Lowry usually composed his paintings from his imagination. He explained: “Often I worked on the canvas entirely from memory. At other times I would make reasonably careful sketches on the backs of envelopes. Then I would take that back inside to make a careful drawing and do the picture .. It is likely therefore that “Factory at Widnes” was inspired by a scene he saw on a trip to Widnes, a town 36km east of his home town, Manchester. He may have sketched the scene at the time. Otherwise he would have committed it to his memory. The painting would have been produced later in his studio. His approach to this painting involved covering the canvas with a white ground and then applying the colours. He used a simple colour range — ivory black, vermilion, yellow ochre, and flake white. The design was always a dominant feature of his work and in “Factory at Widnes” the vertical and horizontal elements of the scene are harmoniously balanced. As well as that, Lowry deliberately simplifies the forms and emphasises the surface pattern. Laurence Stephen Lowry was born in Manchester in 1887, the only child of Robert Lowry, an estate agent, and Elizabeth Hobson. While Lowry was still at school he developed an interest in sketching but neither of his parents encouraged this interest. In fact, when he left school in 1904, he was firmly guided into a business career. Lowry would have preferred to study art full-time but he had to be content with classes in the evenings. Between 1905 and 1925, therefore, he studied art at the Municipal College of Art, Manchester, and the Salford School of Art. In the meantime he worked in an accountant’s office and then for an insurance firm. Finally, in 1910, he was employed as a rent collector and clerk at the Pall Mall Property Company. He remained with the firm for 42 years, retiring from his position as head cashier in 1952 with a pension.

His artistic output during this time was prolific. It is difficult to imagine how he fitted it into his busy life. It is interesting to learn that Lowry, in fact, wanted the public to believe that he spent all his time painting: he deliberately created the myth that he was a full-time painter. For instance, in 1966 he made the following comment to Edwin Mullins of the “Sunday Telegraph”:

“Of course I often used to wonder if Fd ever make any money. I was living at home so it wasn’t urgent, but every now and then I felt thoroughly fed up and I’d say: ‘This is ridiculous: I'll take a job.’ But I didn’t like the thought of going to the office with a bag in my hand at half past nine every morning. And then some little sale would come along and that was enough to keep me going for another year.”

The reason why he created this myth was that he felt his art would not be taken seriously if people knew he worked in an office. He

was terrified of being labelled a “Sunday painter.” In 1912, Lowry saw the social realist play “Kindle Wakes” by Stanley Houghton and it had a profound effect on his artistic development. The play was set in industrial Lancashire and concerned a romance between the daughter of a mill worker and the son of the mill owner. Its significance to Lowry was that it was the first play he had seen which dealt with the industrial environment. The images it presented made a deep impression on his mind and encouraged him to look at the industrial scene around him. He realised then that “All my material was on the doorstep.” From that time on he proceeded to paint what he saw every day on his rent-collecting trips and his walks around the city. Rent evictions, arrests, accidents, fights, funerals, people spilling out of mills and schools, and crowd scenes were some of his subjects. It is interesting that it was a play rather than a single artist or an artistic style that influenced Lowry’s development. Some critics have compared his paintings with those of his contemporaries — for instance, William Roberts and Stanley Spence — in an attempt to slot him into a specific artistic movement but Lowry stands alone in the development of twentieth century British art.

The reason for this is that he evolved his style in isolation. He never travelled out of England and he rarely travelled to London. He met few artists in Manchester and even though he spent 20 years at night school art classes he did not allow the styles of his teachers, or fellow students, to influence him. Instead he worked out his highly individual style in the solitude of his studio.

In 1939, Lowry’s mother died and the artist was left alone in the world. He was by nature a loner, preferring to observe life rather

than take part in it. One would have thought, therefore, that he would have felt relief at no longer having to look after his ailing and irascible mother. Sadly, he felt no release. He had always been close to his mother and his grief was deep. His suffering carried over into his art and as a result paintings of the physically handicaped and of disasters and tragedies abounded. Even in his most crowded scenes there was a sense of desolation and emptiness. Fortunately, Mrs Lowry had seen her son receive some recognition from the art world before she died. In 1930, the Manchester City Art Gallery bought “An Accident” and in 1931 the Tate Gallery purchased “Coming out of School.” In 1939, the year she died, the influential art dealer, A. J. McNeill, organised a one-man show of Lowry’s work at the Lefevre Gallery. From this time on Lowry’s reputation grew. The Lefevre Gallery continued to show his work and in 1948 Lowry was made a member of the London Group. In 1955 he was elected an associate of the Royal Academy and in 1962 he was made a Royal Academician

In 1966 and 1967 a retrospective exhibition of Lowry’s art, organised by the British Arts Council, toured England. Lowry was proud of these achievements yet curiously, in 1970 when Harold Wilson offered him a knighthood, he refused it. Possibly he believed that public recognition of this kind would diminish his reputation as a serious professional painter.

In 1975, Lowry was made an honorary Doctor of Letters by the Universities of Salford and Liverpool. This was the last tribute to his contribution to art that he received before he died, in 1976, at the age of 88.

“Factory at Widnes” was one of two paintings which Lowry sent to Christchurch at the invitation of the Canterbury Society of Arts in 1957. Both works were exhibited at the annual exhibition of that year and were available for purchase. The McDougall acquired “Factory at Widnes” but it is not known what happened to the other work, “Dockside, Glasgow.” “Factory at Widnes” will be on display at the gallery during June.

By

DEBORAH SHEPARD,

Gallery information officer