Valette & Lowry book extract

Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry

ADOLPHE

VALETTE

ADOLPHE

VALETTE

L. S.

LOWRY

L. S.

LOWRY Cécilia Lyon

Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry

ADOLPHE

VALETTE

L. S.

LOWRY

Cécilia Lyon

Contents

Foreword

Claire H. Stewart............................................................................................................................................................ 9

1 Adolphe Valette: The Formative Years in France and his Arrival in England...................................................................... 10 Saint-Etienne, Early Education .............................................................................................................. 11 Lyon, Academic Honours ........................................................................................................................ 16 Bordeaux, Honours, Disappointments and a Springboard of Fate ............................................... 17 Arrival in England ..................................................................................................................................... 20

2 L. S. Lowry: A Youth in Victorian and Edwardian Manchester and its Industrial Context .............................................................................. 24 The Local Industrial and Social Scene ................................................................................................. 25 Family Background, First Employment, First Artistic Aspirations ............................................. 31

3 Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry at the Manchester Municipal School of Art............................................................ 36 The Arrival of Valette and Lowry at the Manchester School of Art .............................................. 37 Lowry’s Early Art School Records ......................................................................................................... 40 A Charismatic Master ............................................................................................................................... 47 Lowry’s Reception at the Manchester School of Art ......................................................................... 54 Valette’s Personal Approach .................................................................................................................... 58 The Progress of Valette’s Career at the Manchester School of Art ................................................ 62 New Directions for Valette and Lowry ................................................................................................. 65 Résumé of Valette’s Pupils and Lowry’s Fellow Students ................................................................ 67

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4 Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry: Influences, Similarities and Differences............................................................. 78 The Artistic Scene in Manchester at the Turn of the Century ........................................................ 79 The Treatment of the Industrial Theme by Artists in Britain ........................................................ 81 Adolphe Valette, a Late Impressionist Painter, and the Painter of Industry and ‘Modern Life’ in Manchester ............................................................... 83 Valette’s Impressionist Paintings of Manchester and their Influence on Lowry ......................................................................................................................... 86 Lowry and Late Impressionism ............................................................................................................. 92 Lowry’s Move to Pendlebury, his Portrayal of the Industrial Landscape and Valette’s Influence ................................................................................... 100 The Waning of Valette’s Influence ....................................................................................................... 109 Valette’s and Lowry’s Locations ............................................................................................................ 110 Valette and Lowry: Participation in the Same Exhibitions in the 1920s in Manchester ................................................................................................................... 118 Valette and Lowry and the Paris Salons ............................................................................................. 123 The Lifelong Exposure of Lowry to the Works of Valette and Lowry’s Assessment of Valette’s Tutelage .................................................................................. 134 Finale ........................................................................................................................................................... 142 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................... 147 Notes ............................................................................................................................................................ 149 Picture Credits ........................................................................................................................................... 153 Index ........................................................................................................................................................... 154

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Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry

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Foreword

One of the most popular exhibitions at The Lowry was ‘Adolphe Valette: A Pioneer of Impressionism in Manchester’, curated by Cécilia Lyon in 2011. For many, Valette’s reputation rests on his having been L. S. Lowry’s principal teacher, and his best-known works, as a result, are the skilled life drawings he made while teaching at Manchester School of Art and his iconic paintings of the city. Cécilia Lyon’s thought-provoking exhibition rounded out Valette’s career beyond his years in Manchester to include portraits of family and friends, commercial designs for textiles and Symbolist landscapes completed after his return to France. His skill and range were clearly demonstrated and, in turn, examples of Lowry’s work were placed in a fascinating new context.

In this new book Cécilia returns to her subject, this time to focus on the relationship between the two artists. Lowry was only one of many students inspired by Valette, and this period at Manchester School of Art was an intensely creative one for both teacher and pupils. New details emerge to engage the reader and bring to life not only the years in Manchester but, as Lowry’s reputation slowly grew, his reflections on Valette’s influence later in his career. As a companion to her previous book on Valette, this is an invaluable source of information for admirers of both artists.

Claire H. Stewart Curator, The Lowry Collection

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Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry at the Manchester Municipal School of Art

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Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry

< Adolphe Valette, Male Nude from the Antique, charcoal on paper, 60.7 x 45.5 cm The Germanicus was among the traditional plaster models kept in the room of casts from the Antique at the Manchester Municipal School of Art. They presented a repertoire of poses allowing the artists to demonstrate their virtuosity in mastering the representation of the musculature of the body but also in reproducing the effects of drapes.

The versions by Valette and Lowry are different in the sense that the artists use different media, charcoal for Valette and pencil for Lowry.

> L. S. Lowry, Male Nude from the Antique, c. 1911, pencil on paper, 54.2 x 35 cm 45

Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry at the Manchester Municipal School of Art

L. S. Lowry, Seated Male Nude, c. 1914, pencil on paper, 54.8 x 34.9 cm A fine example of Lowry’s skills in executing life drawing, contradicting some of his detractors who said that he couldn’t draw. This work is a specific exercise from the curriculum of the course, to draw a figure in a fixed predetermined time. This drawing was realised in eight hours, as indicated by the artist’s handwritten note at the top left-hand side of the paper.

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Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry

> Adolphe Valette, Model, Life Class, Manchester School of Art, oil on canvas laid on board, 55 x 40 cm The female models at the Municipal School of Art were from all walks of life. The names of the Pachito sisters, Louise Gunnery and Hetty the Magnificent recur frequently, all drawn by Valette and Lowry. Some worked in the Manchester theatres.

Students of the school and models formed a relaxed and unconventional group, which neither Lowry nor his parents had anticipated upon his registration at the school.

< Adolphe Valette, Nude Model at the Manchester School of Art, oil on canvas, 79.5 x 52.5 cm The model is represented in a sitting position in the schoolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life class studio. The attitude is simple, far from the affectation of traditional academic poses.

The artist focuses his attention on how light caresses and enhances the female body. The almost schematic rectangular decoration and the drape are there to highlight the sensual shapes of the model.

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Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry at the Manchester Municipal School of Art

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Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry

L. S. Lowry, Selling Oilcloth on the Oldham Road, 1914, oil on board, 29.2 x 39.2 cm Lowry took his early paintings to the Art School and showed them to his teachers. John Millard, the Head of Sculpture, did not like them, and criticised the treatment of his figures: ‘They all look like marionettes’, he said, ‘and if you pulled the strings they would all cock their legs up.’

L. S. Lowry, Head from the Antique, c. 1908, pencil on paper, 52 x 33.7 cm L. S. Lowry, Girl with Bouffant Hair, c. 1912, pencil on paper, 41.8 x 34.8 cm In an interview with Barry Sturt-Penrose in 1966, Lowry emphasised that he spent a long time on a meticulous apprenticeship: ‘At Art School they wanted accuracy more than anything else. They didn’t start you doing a sketch out of your head, sort of slap-dash, and then say, “Oh, that’s very good.” If you were in the Art School, you drew like you would in Art School.’1 Valette was adamant that his students should conform to the academic standards of art tuition in force at the time.

swipe from the neck to the ankle that might have been carved with a meat-axe. He had no feeling for subtlety of line, for that matter no feeling for the female form divine. It was not that he did not understand the answer – he could not find the problem.’57 Nonetheless, Fitton provided a very fine analysis of the relationship between the teacher and his pupil: Valette, however, treated him very magnanimously. Valette was a venerable disciple of Degas and therefore he venerated drawing, draughtsmanship. He could have pasted into Lowry and torn him to shreds. I think what he did was to decide that Lowry was unteachable, and so he gave up precise ambition for him but never ceased to nourish him. There is a potential artist in everybody if people can do their own stuff once they’ve learned the fundamental discipline. If you confront an artist with what you might call the grammar of craft – that you can’t express this without doing that – if the artist accepts this and has any creative ability then he will come through. Valette realised pretty early that he would never teach Lowry to draw like Degas.

Fortunately he was not an aggressive chap.

So when he had come up on Lowry, observed his work in silence for some time, and swiftly jotted the notation of an amendment on the side of the paper, he passed on, not censoriously but radiating enthusiasm.58

Fitton recalled how he went sometimes with Lowry on Saturday afternoons and Sundays up the Oldham Road with their sketchbooks, working ‘on the motif’, en plein air. Or they would go to the cathedral, to Daisy Nook or Boggat Hole Clough, or together to the theatre. Later in life, Fitton became a Royal Academician before Lowry and lobbied for Lowry’s election.

Lowry either. John Millard, the Head of Sculpture, never perceived Lowry’s artistic potential, as he did not like the treatment of the figures in his paintings. Lowry said: ‘A nd I remember showing a gentleman at the School of Art, Millard, some of the things that I was trying to do, and he said: “Why, they all look like marionettes, and if you pulled the strings they would all cock their legs up.”’59 Many years later, commentators were urging reconsideration of Lowry’s Antique and life drawings. The art critic Mervyn Levy stated: Eventually, on the basis of long years of solid academic study, it is not so much what the artist puts in as what he leaves out that counts. The most brilliantly free sketch, which looks so effortless and easy, is based upon a foundation of excruciatingly detailed academic study. And although Lowry never possessed the technical virtuosity of a draughtsman like Augustus John or John Singer Sargent, he was a sufficiently dedicated student of drawing from the antique and from life to store carefully for future reference all the vital information which other masters may have expressed with more dexterity, but certainly with no more knowledge. Lowry’s drawings from the antique and from life repay close study. In the life drawings we can often see the germination point of his linear drawings of the twenties, and also of the satirical drawings which were to come much later on and in which editing is all-important.60

In his capacity as teacher, Valette was undoubtedly more geared towards judging the technical skills of his students rather than the development of their own style.

Like most of the students, the other teachers at the School of Art were not indulgent towards 57

Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry: Influences, Similarities and Differences

Adolphe Valette, The Irwell, 1913, oil on hessian, 143.5 x 86.3 cm Like his inspirer Monet, Valette viewed smoke and fog with a creative eye.

Valette said that there was ‘a beauty in Manchester’; there is here an obvious poetics in the onslaught of industry and its corollary, pollution. Valette was the first to depict industry and modernity in the northern ‘cottonopolis’.

Adolphe Valette, Albert Square, Manchester, 1910, oil on jute, 152 x 114 cm Albert Square is Valette’s most iconic painting of Manchester. It is a hymn to the ‘modern life’ of the city where ‘cotton is king’.

The motor car is present next to the horse-drawn cart, and electric cables cross the polluted sky.

The glorious Gothic buildings with their towers and spires form a backdrop to the everyday affairs of business. The work is the result of the fusion of Valette’s elegant handling of Impressionism with his new encounter with the haze and the fog of the northern metropolis.

Undeniably, this painting contains elements that would be adopted later by Lowry, including the bentover cellarman pushing his wine cart in the foreground, which foreshadows Lowry’s figures.

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Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry

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Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry: Influences, Similarities and Differences

Valette’s Impressionist Paintings of Manchester and their Influence on Lowry One of the paintings that springs to mind when thinking of the influence of Valette on Lowry is certainly Albert Square, Manchester (1910). In a nutshell, one finds here some of the themes that would weave into Lowry’s paintings: the importance of architectural focus points, in this case the memorial monument to Prince Albert with its baldachin structure and the statue of Gladstone; the importance of the crowds; and the fact that, in each part of the composition, a human story is being told. The most striking character in the painting, who prefigures Lowry’s characters, is the cellarman pushing his cart full of red-waxed, corked wine bottles.

Lowry’s critic Tom Rosenthal notes: ‘His is a posture one can later find in at least a dozen Lowry paintings from the 1930s onwards.’99 The art historian Michael Howard also finds that Albert Square is fundamental to explaining the influence of Valette on Lowry. He comments: One of Valette’s major works is Albert Square of c1910, completed some two years before Lowry saw the play Hindle Wakes and began to consider his ambition to become the painter of the industrial scene. Here are the raw ingredients of what by the 1920s would be a ‘typical’ Lowry : the close harmony of muted colours, the unvarnished surface and a certain roughness of texture (created by the weave of the canvas in the Valette, by layered paint in Lowry’s paintings). They share a preference for compositional structures based on horizontals and verticals, with crisply defined silhouettes set against softer, more ambiguous forms.

Equally, Lowry adopts Valette’s simplification of drawing and shares the French artist’s care in the placing of his figures, statues and animals within the composition. Most evident is the urban setting. Smog and grime are transformed, in true Whistlerean manner, through the filtering effect of the 86

evening twilight into a harmony of beautifully orchestrated tones. In Valette’s painting of Albert Square, there is also a certain quirky humour, intentional or otherwise, that coincided with Lowry’s own: Gladstone, set forever on his plinth, will never catch the cab that he appears to be hailing.100

Emblems of a new, modern era are present in this 1910 painting: electric cables, a motor car. Lowry, by contrast would often omit the symbols of modernity from his paintings; one rarely sees any cars (he never owned or drove a car), any references to electricity, or buildings reflecting the wealth of the town in his works. Lowry’s narrative, throughout his career, obliterates the advance of science and technology, and he remains in a universe that he has frozen in time and that reflects a certain anachronism. Valette is more a painter of ‘modern life’ than his pupil, who remains somehow more nostalgic in his approach. In Albert Square, Valette shows the duality between the working class and the business world, with the bent-over cellarman from the world of manual work, and at the other end, business people conversing in the square; a car with its chauffeur, emblem of the well-to-do, awaits the owner. There again, Lowry, by contrast, does not give exposure to class differences; he only shows the lower or working classes with whom he was familiar through his occupation as a rent collector.

A pair of canvases of the same size representing urban Manchester, Hansom Cab at All Saints (1910) and Old Cab at All Saints (1911), demonstrate a slightly different artistic tack by Valette, moving in the direction of Pointillism, which shows that the French artist was keen to experiment with Impressionism and open up new avenues. The application of the paint is different from that of his other works: it is done with a real juxtaposition of small patches, in an ‘optical mix’. The brushstrokes

Adolphe Valette, Old Cab at All Saints, 1911, oil on jute, 115.5 x 155.3 cm Valette is experimenting here with a slightly different style of Impressionism, called Pointillism.

Josephine Duddle, one of the students at the Manchester School of Art, mentions this new painterly technique: ‘He would set up a canvas and we were dazzled by his Impressionistic technique of dabbing on spots of colour.’ In this painting are also motifs which are forerunners of Lowry: the facelessness of the passers-by refers as much to their anonymity as their need of proximity.

Also, the marionnettish representation of the pipe-smoking cabbie, and the stationary horse with its nose buried in its feedbag, anticipate Lowry’s figures.

L. S. Lowry, Man Lying on a Wall, 1957, oil on canvas, 40.7 x 50.9 cm Lowry’s creation of blackdressed and stylised figures stems from Valette.

We see them in Valette’s Albert Square in the form of a cellarman pushing a cart full of bottles, or in Old Cab at All Saints as a cabbie, or in Oxford Road as multiple suggestions of a hurried crowd.

Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry

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Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry: Influences, Similarities and Differences

Adolphe Valette, York Street leading to Charles Street, 1913, oil on linen, 81.3 x 60 cm This painting is a good example of the artistic influence that Valette had on Lowry regarding subject matter and technique. The scene encompasses all the attributes of the industrial landscape: a train, smoke, warehouses, the motor car, workers. The set-up of the painting, with buildings on both sides of the canvas, an arch linking them and a building as backdrop, is a compositional technique often seen in Lowryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s opus.

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Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry

L. S. Lowry, Early Morning, 1954, oil on canvas, 45.8 x 61 cm In the same way as Valette employs strong compositional techniques such as bridges to lock elements of his painting together, Lowry uses a bridge to link two sides of the composition. Here, the gate is flanked by angular buildings. This would remain a long-lasting technical legacy from his tutor.

working class who have been affected by the Industrial Revolution. Lowry’s characters, their round shoulders, their bent attitude in crowds, all stem from this starting point. Sometimes the figures are dramatised, as in Lowry’s incidental scenes; sometimes they reflect the anonymity of the masses, as in his scenes of multitude; sometimes they are treated with humour, as in Man Lying on a Wall; or they pose an interrogation on solitude, as in Two People, on the back cover of this book.

With Valette’s York Street leading to Charles Street (1913), the onlooker is transported to the centre of Manchester. The background of the painting is illuminated by the rear façade of India House, a large building which is also the subject of another painting by Valette. The scene is very animated. It takes place in a busy street; a crowd of people are about their business, road menders are at

work in the foreground repairing the road. By contrast, Lowry very rarely shows his figures carrying out their work: he shows them going to work, to the mills etc.; they come out of the mills and factories, but Lowry doesn’t show them at work, as Valette does here, or in Albert Square, for example. Valette uses the theme of the bridge to link the two sides of the composition; the focal point of the steam from the train vanishes in a smog of pollution that covers the city. The careful placing of architectural elements that limit the expanse of the painting or link its flanks is manifest in several of Valette’s Manchester-scapes: York Street leading to Charles Street, Old Cab at All Saints, Albert Square Manchester, Bailey Bridge, India House, The Irwell.

Lowry would also use arches to link the two sides of his paintings, as in Early Morning, The Factory Gate, Mill Scene (1971); these arches 91

Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry: Influences, Similarities and Differences

< Adolphe Valette, Llandudno, oil on canvas, 12.5 x 16.5 cm > L. S. Lowry, Seascape, 1952, oil on canvas, 39.5 x 49.5 cm

In an earlier interview in 1967, Lowry said: ‘People say that I was influenced by what was happening in France, but I was not aware of it. I could have been subconsciously influenced by Valette.’108 A little further on in the interview, Lowry is more specific and willingly admits to having been influenced by Valette for his ‘seascapes of the Fylde coast’, but, he adds, not by Valette’s still lifes, as he had never seen these. This statement by Lowry is rather surprising, because Valette had, at the time, not made any seascapes, in any case not of the conventional type like the seascapes by Lowry showing the shore or boats in local coastal resorts. In saying this, Lowry was probably referring more broadly to his early vistas of the Fylde coast, which are done with deft strokes and dabs of impasto that recall Valette’s Impressionist style. This 98

is corroborated by Mervyn Levy, who noted when he visited Lowry’s home in 1961: There must have been upwards of 400 drawings on this table when I first saw the pile, many of them dating back to the early twenties. Drawings of great delicacy, and many of unfamiliar subject, and technique. In particular, drawings of boats, and quay-sides, and a few shimmering pastels of landscape, reminiscent of the Impressionists.109

However, Lowry later set to work with radically stripped seascapes which also may have been inspired by some of Valette’s pochades made on the motif in and near Llandudno, creating a striking image done with minimal handling and broad sweeps of monochrome paint. Valette’s Llandudno and Lowry’s Seascape are reduced to a truly austere simplicity. The landscape is

Valette’s Llandudno and Lowry’s Seascape are reduced to a truly austere simplicity.

The landscape is summed up in a succession of superimposed coloured bands of uneven width, suggesting the sky, the sea, the foam of the waves and the sand.

Of this work, Lowry declared: ‘I never expected the picture to be very popular … I think this is one of the best things I have ever done.’

Lowry said that he was influenced by Valette for his seascapes of the Fylde coast.

Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry

summed up in a succession of superimposed coloured bands of uneven width, suggesting the sky, the sea, the foam and the sand. Of this work, Lowry declared: ‘I never expected the picture to be very popular … I think this is one of the best things I have ever done.’ These two canvases create an impression of immensity, and condense the essence of a landscape.

In contrast to his 1970 comments to Maitland, Lowry conceded freely in earlier interviews that he started painting in an Impressionist style; in 1951 he confessed to the author Maurice Collis: ‘When in 1909 we settled in Pendlebury, I was 22. In 1911, I made the portraits of my parents, which I will show you tomorrow. During those years I painted in an Impressionistic manner and direct from nature. Till 1915, when I was 28, I was satisfied with that sort of painting, […].’110

When Collis was in Lowry’s home in Mottram, he saw what he called early landscapes by Lowry in an Impressionist vein. Collis commented: ‘Besides the portraits [of his parents], he produced enough of his early landscapes for me to form an idea of the style which he began to discard after 1915, a free brush kind of Impressionism affected by many young painters, then as now.’111 Similarly, Lowry’s early penchant for a type of light and gentle Impressionism was echoed by James Fitton, his classmate at the Manchester School of Art. Fitton remembered the early days when both went sketching in the outskirts of Manchester: ‘Sometimes we took watercolours and did vaguely Impressionist studies at Heaton Park, Daisy Nook, Boggart Hole Clough and Northenden.’112 99

Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry: Influences, Similarities and Differences

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Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry

The Waning of Valette’s Influence Until 1920 (when the influence of Valette was still noticeable), Lowry painted in relatively dark colours, similar to the backgrounds used by the French artist in his Manchesterscapes, though Valette succeeded stylistically in transforming his scenes with elements of mystical beauty. Lowry needed to find a way to differentiate himself from his tutor. The person who enabled Lowry to find his own style and to liberate himself from a restatement of Valette’s industrial landscape was Bernard Taylor. Taylor was influential in helping Lowry develop his own pictorial authenticity.

L. S. Lowry, Coming Home from the Mill, 1928, oil on panel, 43 x 53 cm A decade separates this painting from Coming from the Mill (page 104).

Lowry has assimilated the advice of Bernard Taylor: the skies are whiter, the lines more defined, the characters more present.

Interestingly, the date of the creation of this painting coincides with Valette’s departure from Manchester. By that time Lowry had acquired his own style.

Bernard Taylor was a teacher at the Salford School of Art, where Lowry started intermittently to attend the life class in 1915, while he was still studying under Valette at the Manchester School of Art. Shelley Rohde records: ‘Taylor was, or so his students remember, “a poor teacher, not forceful enough, but clever and an excellent critic”.’122 Taylor was the noted art critic and reviewer of the Manchester Guardian; he signed his notices with his initials ‘B.D.T.’ Taylor offered a very eloquent review of Lowry’s 1921 exhibition, which he held with two other artists (Tom Brown and Rowland Thomasson) at 87 Mosley Street, in Thomasson’s office. These paintings, although some have been lost or were reworked by the artist, were probably rather dark in outlook at the time of their display. Lowry remembered this review as being the first positive review he ever received. He started to pay attention to Taylor’s advice when he told him to put a white background to his paintings. This helped him to transcend what Valette had imbued in him and enabled him to create his own style.

The titles in Lowry’s 1921 exhibition (the 27 paintings exhibited had obviously been prepared during the previous years) hint at

L. S. Lowry, An Organ Grinder, 1934, oil on canvas, 53.5 x 39.5 cm An Organ Grinder is a typical example of a painting by Lowry in which Valette’s influence has become inconspicuously subtle.

The encouragement given

by Bernard Taylor, the art critic of the Manchester Guardian, during and in the aftermath of Lowry’s 1921 exhibition can be taken as the pivotal point when Lowry took off in his own original way, applying, on Taylor’s advice, a white background to his paintings.

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Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry: Influences, Similarities and Differences

Adolphe Valette, Bailey Bridge, Manchester, 1912, oil on jute, 155 x 115 cm Pointillism in France has mostly been associated with fresh views of nature.

Here, Valette uses the technique in association with an industrial theme and the suggestion of squalor, although magnified by eeriness. We are here in the centre of Manchester. Lowry, when tackling the theme of the river Irwell, preferred to picture this waterway on the outskirts of the city.

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Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry

Adolphe Valette, Manchester Ship Canal, 18 mars 1908, oil on canvas, 35.5 x 40 cm Adolphe Valette, Manchester Ship Canal, oil on canvas, 49.5 x 39.5 cm Valette put his easel on the side of the Manchester Ship Canal, close to where the Lowry Centre, the art gallery with its important collection of Lowry’s works, now stands. The Manchester Ship Canal was a pioneering work of engineering which was begun in 1887, the year of Lowry’s birth.

This industrial landmark became one of Valette’s themes, which he depicted in a ‘series’, just as Monet did series of the Thames. In these two paintings, Valette shows the ocean-going merchant ships, the barges, and in the background Trafford Wharf with its warehouses and industrial buildings.

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Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry: Influences, Similarities and Differences

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Adolphe Valette and L. S. Lowry

< L. S. Lowry, Election Time, reproduced in the 1930 catalogue of the Société des Artistes Français L. S. Lowry, Mill Scene, reproduced in the 1931 catalogue of the Société des Artistes Français L. S. Lowry, A Football Match, reproduced in the 1932 catalogue of the Société des Artistes Français The fact that Lowry’s paintings were singled out to be photographed for the catalogues is a reflection of their intrinsic qualities.

Indeed Lowry’s paintings were appreciated by the French reviewers; their uniqueness in representation and style are noticeable when compared to most of the other exhibits of the salons.

< L. S. Lowry, Mill Scene, 1928, oil on canvas, 29.2 x 50.8 cm

> L.S. Lowry, Election Time, 1929, oil on canvas, 41.9 x 50.8 cm L. S. Lowry, A Football Match, 1932, oil on panel, 45 x 55 cm 129

ADOLPHE

VALETTE Colophon

L. S.

LOWRY

‘The art master was a Mr. A. Valette.

I owe him an everlasting debt.

‘I can’t overestimate the effect on me at that time of First published 2020 the coming into this drab city of Adolphe Valette, full ofAdolphe the French aware of everything ValetteImpressionists, and L.S. Lowry that was going on in Paris. He had a freshness and a breadth of experience that exhilarated his students.

Published by PROSE ‘I owe soBOOK muchPUBLISHING to him, for it was he who first showed www.prosebookpublishing.com

me good drawings; by the great masters. He was a real teacher – a dedicated teacher.’ © Cécilia Lyon

L. S. Lowry

All Rights Reserved, 2020 No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, with permission in writing by the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-5272-5892-1 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Designed by Axis Graphic Design Printed and bound in Belgium by Graphius

160

ISBN 978-1-5272-5892-1

ISBN 978-1-5272-5892-1

9 781527 258921 Front cover left to right: Adolphe Valette, Self-Portrait wearing Straw Hat (detail).

L.S. Lowry, Self-Portrait, 1925.

9 781527 258921

Below left to right: Adolphe Valette, Albert Square, Manchester, 1910 (detail).

L.S. Lowry, Two People, 1962.