L.S. LOWRY RA (1887-1976) - A 70th Anniversary Exhibition

In Memoriam

CAROL ANN LOWRY (1944–2020)

I would like to pay tribute to the late Carol Ann Lowry who passed away peacefully two years ago, surrounded by her beloved family.

Carol first met L.S. Lowry in 1957, aged 13, having been prompted by her mother to write to the artist, telling him she would like to study art. To Lowry, Carol became a friend, muse and heir. Lowry was simply ‘Uncle Laurie’ to Carol. After Lowry’s death, Carol devoted much of her time and energy passionately supporting and protecting his legacy.

Carol was a dear and benevolent friend to Crane Kalman Gallery. Always kind and keen to lend to our exhibitions and anonymously financing projects, including the documentary Looking for Lowry (Foxtrot Films, 2011) featuring Sir Ian McKellen and in 2014, the artist’s first ever solo show overseas, in Nanjing, China.

Carol was an ardent advocate for the need to meticulously research and publish an L.S. Lowry Catalogue Raisonné, a monumental task for such a popular and prolific artist.

Carol initiated and unstintingly guided the project until her death. Carol’s daughter, Suzi, is determined to support the completion of the work as a tribute to her mother and has been unfailing in her generous support of this exhibition.

Sally Kalman, Robin Light, Andrew Kalman

Carol Ann Lowry c.1962, Guttenberg Photographic Studio’s, Manchester, commissioned by L.S. Lowry.

Gate Posts, 1938 Election News, 1945

Crane Gallery exhibition card from 1952, listing three works by L.S. Lowry at a combined sale price of £295.

Burford Church, 1948

Crane Kalman Gallery Ltd 178 Brompton Road, London sw3 1hq +44 (0)20 7584 7566 www.cranekalman.com / info@cranekalman.com

In the winter of 1949, Andras Kalman opened a gallery in a basement air-raid shelter in South King Street, Manchester, where the weekly £2 rent was paid by the regular pawning of his typewriter. By a lot of persuasion and not a little charm, both of which he can display in abundance, he managed to obtain for the his first exhibition, works by Sir Jacob Epstein, Matthew Smith, Lucian Freud and John Craxton. Invitations to a private view were sent to every influential name he could discover, from members of the Art Gallery Committee to town councillors … No one came. Not one single dignitary, critic or buyer had either replied or responded.

The second exhibition threatened to be as great a disaster as the first. On the third day Lowry appeared; down the steps he came, buzzing like a bluebottle around the gallery until, summing up the situation, he bought a picture. Kalman recalls, ‘It cost him about £20 and I think he bought it only to give my morale a boost.’

Kalman already knew of Lowry by repute as a ‘conversational painter, regarded with great suspicion locally.’ Now he was to know the man. Visits to the gallery were followed by trips across the road for tea at Fuller’s, where they ate walnut cake and discussed for hours their own highly individual views on dealers and artists. (‘London’s dealers’, said Kalman, ‘consider themselves more important than the artists, sitting in their galleries like brothel-keepers of Amsterdam.’ ‘In reality,’ said Lowry, ‘they are just grocers who sell paintings.’)

Andras Kalman outside Crane Gallery, South King Street, Manchester, c.1952.

Extract from Shelley Rodhe’s biography A Private View of L.S. Lowry (Collins, London, 1979) describing the first encounter between Lowry and Andras Kalman in 1950

Andras Kalman outside Crane Gallery, Manchester, 1956, tying a painting by Graham Sutherland to the roof of his Alvis. That evening, on the trunk road to London, it blew off. After a search, he retrieved it in a nearby field.

Kalman became fiercely resentful of the establishment’s treatment of his friend: ‘You had to see that this was an exceptional man; his whole way of life, speaking, eating, were against the norm. There was a strong integrity about him–you had to be an insensitive moron not to see it in the man.’

In the year that Kalman first exhibited Lowry’s work in 1952 (it was not a notable success) the artist reached his 65th birthday. All the time he had continued to work as cashier and bookkeeper at Pall Mall (Property Company) and he now retired with a pension of £200 a year.

Ironically, in 1952, one of his works had been bought by the Museum of Modern Art in New York; there is no doubt that if Kalman had tried to sell them in London, Paris or even in Canada, he would have met with considerably less resistance than he encountered in Manchester.

In those early days Kalman was struggling not only to sell Lowry, but any painter. (So) Kalman transferred to Knightsbridge in 1957, having abandoned Manchester where he had not once in ten years been invited into a private home and still felt himself to be regarded as ‘a bloody foreigner’.

CRANE KALMAN GALLERY

Untitled (Man at Door), 1962

Pencil on paper, 13.5 x 10 ins (34.9 x 25.4 cms)

Signed and dated lower left

Provenance: The Estate of L.S. Lowry

Exhibited: Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, The Loneliness of L.S. Lowry, Jul–Oct 2010, cat. no. 42 (and a subsequent version at Crane Kalman Gallery, London, 16 Nov–18 Dec 2010);

The Lowry, Salford, on long-term loan

Literature: The Loneliness of L.S. Lowry (Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, 2010), p70, cat. no. 42, illustrated

Lowry in 1966, standing in the doorway of The Elms, in Mottram-in-Longdendale, east Manchester, his home from 1948 until his death in 1976. Photograph by Clive Arrowsmith, Camera Press London

An Introduction by Howard Jacobson

If I were admitted to Art Heaven on the understanding that, as a Northerner myself, I had to take one painting and only one painting by a Northern artist with me, that painting would be Ship Entering Prince’s Dock, Glasgow (1947) by L.S. Lowry. There are not many paintings I believe I could go through eternity with, but this is one of them. Though I have no particular interest in ships or docks this work induces in me a sense of peace and proportionality, an utter geometric serenity (and I have no particular interest in geometry either) that would calm me through the longest nights of heavenly tedium. I should mention that there is not a single matchstick man, or human figure of any other kind, to be seen anywhere on the canvas. Were it not that someone must have built the boat and someone else must be captaining it into dock, one could, on the evidence of this painting, doubt the existence of human life altogether.

That the quality of Lowry’s work should have been relentlessly argued over, both during his life and in the nearly fifty years since he died, is hardly a surprise. Painting in general has struggled to survive aesthetic whim in that time, and the condescension shown to it by metropolitan critics was always bound to be greater in the case of a painter who, in much of his work, could be pigeon-holed and then dismissed as realistic, provincial, without the saving grace of extreme beauty or extreme ugliness and, worst of all, popular. But the changes in understanding of what Lowry was about – how he is to be described; never mind how good he is at what he does but just what it is he does do; quite bluntly: where we are meant to put him? – have been greater than anyone could have anticipated. Only a minute or two, measured in art-time, he was a Sunday painter with attitude; now he is an inspired critic of capitalism, a poet of the industrial apocalypse.

A rethinking was well underway before the Tate Britain exhibition in 2013, Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life, but that show – an eye-opener even to long-standing admirers who knew Lowry was good but didn’t know he was that good and certainly didn’t know he was that various – made the argument for yet further re-appraisal of Lowry’s work irresistible. It isn’t always the case that a big exhibition will show an artist’s work off to its best advantage. See too many canvases that feel the same on the same day and art that once was shocking begins to look routine. This was the case, it seemed to me, with the Bacon exhibition, ‘Francis Bacon: Man and Beast’, earlier this year at the Royal Academy of Arts. Horror, too, can be summoned up at the flick of the fingers and the wildest beasts will lose their power to frighten if they roar obediently and too often. No show could have felt more different in spirit than Lowry’s, but then no two artists could be further apart. Bacon, the great internationalist, loudly trumpets the awkward transgressiveness of art; Lowry, who is never anything but defiantly provincial, wilfully understates not only his own ambitions as an artist but the ambitions of others. Describing his preference for amateur painters over professionals, he once said ‘They have a naivete and an approach that the professional, or the amateur that becomes professional, loses after a time. I find far more pleasure in an amateur’s work, or a local art society, than I do in a proper show. With the amateur you don’t know what you’re going to see … but in the art trade you’ve a pretty good idea.’

CRANE

Ship Entering Glasgow Dock, 1947. See p. 80 for further details.

We don’t have to deny the virtues of naivete, or the pleasure there can be in discovering something unexpected in the work of an amateur artist, to see that Lowry is having fun with ‘the art trade’ here. Art trade, notice. If Bacon liked to provoke by being shocking, Lowry liked to provoke by not being shocking enough. Confronted by the over-earnestness and grandiosity of the London art scene, it was a matter of faith for him to play down the seriousness with which he went about his work. In an article for The Guardian in 2013 the novelist Jeanette Winterson takes his professed amateurishness at face value, calling him a ‘sensible night-school-trained amateur artist in search of a subject.’ The version of Lowry as an artist who stumbled un-trained and almost accidentally into art is a fiction, but it’s a fiction of his own making.

He worked as a rent-collector and enjoyed dressing for the part, affecting a no-nonsense and defiantly non-Bohemian persona. Asked why he painted he would say such things as ‘I wasn’t fit to do anything else,’ and ‘I work because there’s nothing else to do.’ If there’s something peculiarly Northern in such self-effacingness, there is also something peculiarly Northern in the provocation – believe what I’ve just told you and you’ll believe anything.

If the man teased, so, sometimes, does the work. The painting Industrial Scene with Monument (1972) has so much frenzied movement, so many hundreds of barely human figures scurrying with no discernible purpose or destination, unless it’s to escape one another, or to circle, in a parody of religious observance, the totemic monument at the centre of the work, that one wonders if it’s a joke at the expense of his usual busy industrial scenes, or a response to critics who don’t understand the rationale of his paintings. ‘Is this what you see in my canvases?’ he could be asking. ‘Then one of us is quite mad.’

More and more we have come, if not exactly to disavow the milling crowds paintings, then to find his genius elsewhere. If we are no longer wildly interested in the little figures he paints, could this be because he never was all that interested in the human figure himself? The actor Ian McKellen, a long-time admirer, writes astutely about Lowry’s most peopled canvases. ‘Until Lowry painted his crowds, no other artist had recorded how people (and animals) look and behave en masse. Each individual is on his/her own journey across the canvas yet leaning to form the crowd with its own collective identity.’ That’s a nice distinction and it makes us look again, but I’m not sure it’s enough to hold our attention except in the very best crowd paintings – the beautifully architectural Hot Potato Cart (1940), for example, where the people, enjoying a rapt, unaccustomed stillness, paint a virtual tableau of themselves, a frozen moment of engrossment in the simplest of life’s shared joys. And McKellen himself admits something of a conversion to Lowry’s ‘empty paintings of sea and mountains’. He is not the first. In 1968, Andras Kalman, an old friend and early champion of Lowry, put on an exhibition entitled The

Loneliness of L.S. Lowry. It featured a number of sea and moor paintings, studies of fields and stone walls, footbridges, blank skies, many of them virtually abstract in their absorption in natural texture and colourless unpeopledness. Could it be that we are slowly – some more slowly than others – coming to prefer the way Lowry looks inwards than the way he looks out? Or could it be that we are not fully convinced he looks out at all?

Attention has turned recently to Lowry’s more surreal, impish and even eroticized paintings and drawings. These, we hope, will offer us entry to the imagination of an artist who lived a strange and guarded life. Why did he choose the single state and what obsessions did it breed? Because we assume that a lonely life must be a psychologically disturbed one, we look for troubled work from a lonely artist. Paintings such as The Haunt (1969), or the twin studies Girl Seen from the Front (1964) and Girl Seen from the Back (1964) are certainly unexpected if we know only the Lowry of crowds and mills, but while they might indeed have their origins in turbulence they don’t express it powerfully. Many of the surreal pencil sketches disappoint in the same way: while they hint at bad dreams and no less troubled wakings, they feel marginal to his imagination. We want Lowry to be an Otto Dix or George Grosz, but his vision is not black enough and his drawing skills not sure enough to deliver satire or savagery. Best, I think, to see them as corrective footnotes to the work we know best: jogs to our complacency, reminders that we know less about him than we think we know.

In truth, though the inner disturbance of the artist intrigues us, it is only when what Lowry sees and what he feels meet to create images of desolation or ruin that we can give credence to the idea of him as a major painter of emotional upheaval. Works such as Industrial Landscape Wigan (1925) or Gate Posts (1938) are paintings of wastelands right enough, but they are as fanciful as they are real, as much waste lands of the soul as the urban environment. We can read them as social commentary if we choose, but the choked and sightless air engulfing Wigan, the brutally amputated verticals of Gate Posts, the absence not only of crowds but of animation altogether, suggest an almost Biblical devastation, so many imagined Sodoms or Gomorrrahs, more psychological than actual. Here, I think, we have the great Lowry, a painter not of cheerful bustle but the very opposite. There are times when what he paints is harsh in its refusal of life but at others, as in many of his field- and seascapes, the absence of the human feels like a consolation, a calming opportunity to enjoy the quiet feel and geometry of a world on which human beings may have left their trace but are no longer to be seen. A supreme example of this is the painting with which I began this essay, Ship Entering Prince’s Dock, Glasgow (1947), where the looming presence of a ship is reduced to its functionality, not as a carrier of goods but a pleasure to the eye, an exquisite shape, perfectly proportioned in itself and in relation to the dock buildings, like a visitant from who can say where bearing who can say what. It is a painting of absolute peace, everything perfected in the world of shapes and spaces. Is it fanciful to ask if God can be immanent in pure shape? Never let it be said, anyway, that Lowry did not see beauty and could not paint it.

Howard Jacobson is a British novelist, essayist and broadcastera Man Booker Prize winner and ardent Lowry admirer.

Lowry in his garden, 1966. Photograph by Clive Arrowsmith, Camera Press London

CRANE KALMAN GALLERY

Old Farm Buildings, Worseley, 1914

Oil on panel, 9.75 x 13.5 ins (24.7 x 34.2 cms)

Signed and dated lower right

Provenance: Reverend Geoffrey S. Bennett, Cumbria (acquired directly from the artist); Alick Leggat, Lancs. (purchased from the above by1981); Private Collection, London (by descent from the above)

Exhibited: Municipal Art Gallery, Middlesborough, on 6 month loan from Geoffrey Bennett to the then new gallery as reported in The Guardian, ‘Forty Years of Sympathy’, article, 16 May 1961;

Royal Academy of Arts, London, L.S. Lowry RA, 1887–1976, 4 Sep–14 Nov 1976, cat. no. 17;

Crane Kalman Gallery, London, 12 Idiosyncratic paintings and drawings by L.S. Lowry RA (1887–1976), Summer 2020;

London, Crane Kalman Gallery, Modern British Paintings, 15 Oct–23 Dec 2020, unnumbered exhibition

Before he became a vicar in Cumbria, Geoffrey Bennett worked for The National Westminster Bank in Manchester. He was also a talented artist and was introduced to Lowry back in 1926. They remained acquainted for 50 years, during which time he amassed a fine if idiosyncratic collection of Lowry’s work.

It was the Reverend Bennett who conducted Lowry’s funeral service at Manchester’s Southern Cemetery in 1976.

Andras Kalman at Lowry’s funeral at Southern Cemetery, Manchester, February 26th, 1976.

CRANE KALMAN GALLERY

Hot Potato Cart, 1940

Oil on board, 17 x 21 ins (43 x 53.5 cms)

Signed and dated lower right

Provenance: The Lefevre Gallery, Alex Reid and Lefevre Ltd, London; Private Collection, London (purchased from the above c.1948); With Crane Kalman Gallery (purchased from the above in 1967)

Private Collection, London (by descent from the above); Private Collection, London

Exhibited: The Lefevre Gallery, Alex Reid and Lefevre Ltd, London, Paintings by Josef Herman and L.S. Lowry, Feb–Mar 1943, cat. no. 11

Royal Academy of Arts, London, L.S. Lowry RA, 1887–1976, 4 Sep–14 Nov 1976, cat. no. 126

Hot Potato Cart is an archetypal Lowry image, illustrating a busy urban scene – a crowd of people gathered around a central focus point. The cart must have been a novelty at the time – an early example of a ‘street food’ vendor – and has attracted considerable interest from the local towns-folk, although some figures, chatting or with small children, appear more ambivalent to the vehicles’ presence.

Lowry draws the viewer into the painting through his use of perspective; the picture-wide street in the composition’s foreground narrows in the middle distance and background; the terraced houses on either side, like theatre curtains drawn back for the ‘actors’ to take centre-stage – a metaphor coined by actor Sir Ian McKellan.

CRANE KALMAN GALLERY

A Football Match, 1932

Oil on panel, 16.7 x 21.7 ins (42.5 x 55.2 cms) Signed and dated lower right

Provenance: The Lefevre Gallery, Alex Reid and Lefevre Ltd, London, Paintings of the Midlands by L.S. Lowry, Feb 1939, cat. no. 1, priced at 30 guineas; The Leicester Galleries, 1942; A.J.P. Taylor, Oxford;

With Crane Kalman Gallery Mar 1968;

Mr Frank Austin, OBE, JP (purchased from the above May 1969); Private Collection, London (purchased in 1982)

Exhibited: Salon, Paris, Apr 1932, no. 1578;

The New English Art Club, 83rd Exhibition, Nov–Dec 1932, no. 324;

Royal Society of British Artists (R.B.A), Spring Exhibition, 1934, no. 386; City Art Gallery, Huddersfield, Autumn Exhibition, 1934, no. 148;

The Lefevre Gallery, Alex Reid and Lefevre Ltd, London, L.S. Lowry, Feb 1939, no. 1;

The Royal Academy, London, 1939, no. 75

Literature: Les Peintres Britanniques Dans Les Salons Parisiens des Origines à 1939 (L’Echelle de Jacob, Dijon, 2003), Beatrice Crespon-Halotier, p. 344, illustrated in b&w; L.S. Lowry: A Biography (Lowry Press, Salford, 1999), Shelley Rohde, p. 55, illustrated in b&w;

Adolphe Valette and L.S. Lowry (Prose Book Publishing, 2020), Cecilia Lyon, pp. 125, 127, 128, 129, illustrated in b&w and also in colour

Post-card of The Football Match, published by Vizzavona, Paris, for the exhibition Salon des Artistes Francais, 1932, in which it was included.

L.S. LOWRY

Reverse of The Football Match

Untitled (Street Scene with large central figure Carrying Board), c.1970

Pencil and Biro on paper, 11.5 x 16.5 ins (29 x 42 cms)

Signed lower right

Provenance:

6.

On the Shore at Maryport, 1966 Pencil on paper, 13.75 x 10 ins (35 x 25.4 cms)

Inscribed On the shore at Maryport lower left, signed and dated lower right

Provenance: The Estate of L.S. Lowry

Exhibited: Crane Kalman Gallery, London, The Estate of L.S. Lowry, 12 Nov 2012–26 Jan 2013; Art Museum of Nanjing University of the Arts, Nanjing, China, L.S. Lowry: Artist of the People, 14 Nov–16 December 2014, cat. p. 58, illustrated in colour

Girl Seen from the Front, 1964 Oil on canvas, 24 x 20 ins (61 x 50.8 cms) Signed and dated lower left

Provenance: The Estate of L.S. Lowry

Exhibited: Stone Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, Nine New Paintings by L.S. Lowry, Jul 1968, cat. no. 5, illustrated in b&w;

Royal Academy of Arts, London, L.S. Lowry RA 1887-1976, 4 Sep–14 Nov 1976, cat. no. 290;

The Lowry, Salford, Double Vision, 15 Jan–15 Jul 2005; The Lowry, Salford, The Art of White, 12 Nov 2005–17 Apr 2006

Literature: The Paintings of L.S. Lowry, Oils and Watercolours (Jupiter Books, London, 1975), Mervyn Levy, no. 91, illustrated in b&w; L.S. Lowry: a biography (Lowry Press, Salford, 1999), Shelley Rohde, p. 263, illustrated in b&w; Lowry, A Visionary Artist (Lowry Press, Salford, 2000), Michael Howard, p. 181, illustrated in colour; L.S. Lowry, The Art and the Artist (Unicorn Press, London, 2010), T.G. Rosenthal, p. 155, illustrated in colour

Girl Seen from the Back, 1964 Oil on canvas, 24 x 20 ins (61x 50.8 cms)

Signed and dated lower left

Provenance: The Estate of L.S. Lowry

Exhibited: Newcastle upon Tyne, Stone Gallery, Nine New Paintings by L.S. Lowry, Jul 1968, cat. no, 5, illustrated in b&w;

Royal Academy of Arts, London, L.S. Lowry RA, 1887–1976, 4 Sep–14 Nov 1976, cat. no. 290;

The Lowry, Salford, Lowry’s People, 28 Apr–28 Aug 2000, illustrated; The Lowry, Salford, Double Vision, 15 Jan–Dec 2005; The Lowry, Salford, The Art of White, 12 Nov 2005–17 Apr 2006

Literature: The Paintings of L.S. Lowry, Oils and Watercolours (Jupiter Books, London, 1975), Mervyn Levy, no. 92, illustrated in b&w; L.S. Lowry: A Biography (Lowry Press, Salford, 1999), Shelley Rohde, p. 263, illustrated in b&w; Lowry, A Visionary Artist (Lowry Press, Salford, 2000), Michael Howard, p. 182, illustrated in colour; L.S. Lowry, The Art and the Artist (Unicorn Press, London, 2010), T.G. Rosenthal, p. 155, illustrated in colour

Lowry at home in his painting room, 1966, with Girl seen from the Front and Girl seen from the Back visible in left and right corners

Photograph by Clive Arrowsmith, Camera Press London

CRANE KALMAN GALLERY

Landscape in Wigan, 1925

Oil on canvas, 16 x 15.5 ins (40.6 x 39.3 cms) Signed and dated lower right

Provenance: Dr A.W. Laing, Lancs. (acquired directly from the artist); Alick Leggat, Lancs. (purchased at Sotheby’s, Jul 1970); Private Collection, London (by descent from the above)

Exhibited: Wakefield, Wakefield City Art Gallery, Lowry Exhibition, 1955, cat. no. 1; Manchester, Manchester City Art Gallery, L.S. Lowry Retrospective Exhibition, 3 Jun–12 Jul 1959, cat. no. 15;

Bury, Bury Art Gallery, L.S. Lowry, 1962, cat. no. 34; Sheffield, Graves Art Gallery, The works of L.S. Lowry, Sep–Oct 1962, cat. no. 8, pl. IV;

Arts Council, L.S. Lowry RA, Retrospective Exhibition, toured to Sunderland Art Gallery 27 Aug–17 Sep 1966, Manchester Whitworth Art Gallery 24 Sep–15 Oct 1966, Bristol City Art Gallery 22 Oct–12 Nov 1966, London Tate Gallery 22 Nov 1966–15 Jan 1967, cat. no. 13, illustrated, pl. 6;

Royal Academy of Arts, London, L.S. Lowry RA, 1887–1976, 4 Sep–14 Nov 1976, cat. no. 56;

The Lowry, Salford, Double Vision, 15 Jan–15 Jul 2005; London, Tate Britain, Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life, 25 Jun–20 Oct 2013, cat. no. 11, illustrated in colour

Literature: The Paintings of L.S. Lowry, Oils and Watercolours (Jupiter Books, London, 1975), Mervyn Levy, illustrated in b&w, pl. 23; Lowry (Phaidon Press Ltd, London, 1979), Julian Spalding, pl. 26; Lowry, A Visionary Artist (Lowry Press, Salford, 2000), Michael Howard, p. 83, illustrated in colour; Lowry’s City: A Painter and his Locale (Lowry Press, Salford, 2000), Judith Sandling and Mike Leber, p. 28, illustrated in colour; L.S. Lowry, A Life (Haus Publishing Ltd, London, 2007), Shelley Rohde, p. 42 illustrated in colour

Today barren grassland, Industrial Landscape, Wigan, is a view of The Kirklees Iron Works, located east of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and was known locally as Top Place. The earliest of the iron works blast furnaces were built in 1858 but totalled ten in 1925, as viewed in Lowry’s painted version.

CRANE KALMAN

CRANE KALMAN GALLERY

The Spire, 1961

Oil on canvas, 29.5 x 21.5 ins (76 x 54.5 cms)

Signed and dated lower right

Provenance: Private Collection

Exhibited: The MAC, Belfast, A People Observed, 19 Apr–19 Jun 2012; The Lowry, Salford, Jock McFadyen Goes to The Lowry: an exhibition 45 years in the making, 16 Oct 2021–27 Feb 2022

Stowell Memorial Church, Salford.

Untitled (Group of Figures with birds on top of their heads)

Pencil on paper, 16.5 x 11.5 ins (42 x 29 cms) Signed lower right

Provenance:

Untitled (Football Face-Off), 1973

Pencil on paper, 13.5 x 10 ins (34.5 x 25.5 cms) Signed and dated lower right

Provenance: The Estate of L.S. Lowry

CRANE KALMAN GALLERY

Gate Posts, 1938

Oil on canvas, 16.5 x 20.5 ins (42 x 52 cms)

Signed and dated lower right

Provenance: Private Collection, London (purchased from Crane Kalman Gallery in 1987/88);

Private Collection, London (purchased from Crane Kalman Gallery in 1994)

Exhibited: Corporation of Liverpool Art Gallery, Bluecoat Chambers, Liverpool, Paintings By L.S. Lowry, 18 Oct–6 Nov 1943, cat. no. 26;

Crane Gallery, Manchester, Selected Works by L.S. Lowry, Duncan Grant, Sir William Nicholson, W.R. Sickert, John Nash, etc., May 21–Jun 12 1952, no. 2; Djanogly Art Gallery, Lakeside Arts Centre, Nottingham, Lowry, 16 Nov 2011–5 Feb 2012, cat. no. 65, illustrated in colour;

Tate Britain, London, Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life, 25 Jun–20 Oct 2013, cat. no. 83, illustrated in colour

Literature: Lowry’s Lamps (Unicorn, London, 2010), Richard Mayson, fig. no. 52, illustrated in colour

I remember a winter afternoon in the dreadful environs of Wigan. All round was the lunar landscape of slag-heaps, and to the north, through the passes, as it were, between the mountains of slag, you could see the factory chimneys sending out their plumes of smoke. The canal path was a mixture of cinders and frozen mud, criss-crossed by the imprints of innumerable clogs, and all round, as far as the slag-heaps in the distance, stretched the ‘flashes’ — pools of stagnant water that had seeped into the hollows caused by the subsidence of ancient pits. It was horribly cold. The ‘flashes’ were covered with ice the colour of raw umber, the bargemen were muffled to the eyes in sacks, the lock gates wore beards of ice. It seemed a world from which vegetation had been banished; nothing existed except smoke, shale, ice, mud, ashes, and foul water.

– George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, 1937

CRANE KALMAN GALLERY

15.

Hyde Town Hall, 1960

Oil on board, 12.9 x 17.9 ins (32.7 x 45.4 cms)

Signed and dated lower right

Provenance: Alick Leggat, Lancs. (acquired directly from the artist); Private Collection, London (by descent from the above)

Exhibited: Salford, The Lowry, on loan from April 2000

Literature: L.S. Lowry, The Art and the Artist (Unicorn Press, London, 2010), T.G. Rosenthal, p. 286, illustrated in colour

Alick Leggat (1906–2004) was one of Lowry’s most avid and loyal collectors. He purchased his first Lowry works from Lefevre Gallery in London but as his occupation as a chemical manufacturer took him often to Manchester, he got to know Lowry well, subsequently acquiring works directly from the artist.

Leggat was the first person to purchase a Lowry from the Crane (Kalman) Gallery’s inaugural Lowry exhibition in Manchester in 1952.

(Untitled) Figure in Bed, undated Pencil on card, 4.5 x 8 ins (11.4 x 20.3 cms)

Provenance: The Estate of L.S. Lowry

Head of a Girl / Girl with Blonde Hair, undated Oil on board, 18 x 14 ins (45.7 x 35.5 cms)

Provenance: The Estate of L.S. Lowry

Exhibited: Art Museum of Nanjing University of the Arts, Nanjing, China, L.S. Lowry: Artist of the People, 14 Nov–16 Dec 2013, cat. pp. 69–70, illustrated in colour; Crane Kalman Gallery, London, 12 Idiosyncratic paintings and drawings by L.S. Lowry RA (1887–1976), Summer 2020

CRANE

CRANE KALMAN GALLERY

Ann / Ann in a Blue Jumper, undated Oil on board, 12.25 x 7 ins (31.1 x 17.8 cms)

Provenance: The Estate of L.S. Lowry

Private Collection, London (acquired from Crane Kalman Gallery in 2018)

Exhibited: Royal Academy of Arts, London, One Hundred and Ninety Fourth Summer Exhibition, 5 May-26 Aug 1962, cat. no. 544 (catalogue not seen taken from Arts Council 1966 exhibition catalogue);

Arts Council, L.S. Lowry RA, Retrospective Exhibition, toured to Sunderland Art Gallery 27 Aug–17 Sep 1966, Manchester Whitworth Art Gallery 24 Sep–15 Oct 1966, Bristol City Art Gallery 22 Oct–12 Nov 1966, London Tate Gallery 22 Nov 1966–15 Jan 1967, cat. no. 83;

Crane Kalman Gallery, London, The Estate of L.S. Lowry, Nov 15 2012–Jan 12 2013

Literature: L.S. Lowry, The Art and the Artist (Unicorn Press, London, 2010), T.G. Rosenthal, p. 254, illustrated in colour; L.S. Lowry: a biography (Lowry Press, Salford, 1999), Shelley Rohde, p. 271, illustrated in b&w

Lowry with one of his many portraits of Ann. Photograph by Clive Arrowsmith, Camera Press London

Untitled (Five Figures and Boy Holding Dog’s Tail), 1968

Pencil on paper, 16.5 x 11.5 ins (42 x 29 cms)

Signed and dated lower right

Provenance: The Estate of L.S. Lowry

Untiled (Seven Figures and Seven Dogs), 1972

Pencil on paper, 10 x 13.75 ins (25.5 x 35 cms)

Signed and dated lower right

Provenance: The Estate of L.S. Lowry

CRANE KALMAN GALLERY

Waiting for the Tide, 1967

Oil on board, 12 x 16 ins (30.5 x 40.5 cms)

Signed and dated lower right

Provenance: Alick Leggat, Lancs.;

Private Collection, London (by descent from the above)

Exhibited: The Lowry, Salford, Lowry’s Places, 16 Sep 2000–1 Jan 2001;

The Lowry, Salford, Double Vision, 15 Jan–15 Jul 2005;

The Lowry, Salford, Lowry and the Sea, 16 Jul–30 Oct 2005;

The Lowry, Salford, The Art of White, 12 Nov 2005–17 Apr 2006;

The Granary Gallery (Berwick Visual Arts), Berwick-upon-Tweed, L.S. Lowry in Berwick and Northumberland, 21 Jun–21 Sep 2014

Lowry in Trilby hat in his neglected garden at The Elms, 1966.

Photograph by Clive Arrowsmith, Camera Press London

Man with Trilby Hat, undated Oil on board, 10.5 x 5.75 ins (26.6 x 14.6 cms)

Provenance: The Estate of L.S. Lowry Exhibited: The Lowry, Salford, So You Want to be an Artist?, 26 Jul–2 Nov 2008; Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, The Loneliness of Lowry, 17 Jul–30 Oct 2010, cat. no. 39, illustrated (and a subsequent version at Crane Kalman Gallery, London, 16 Nov–18 Dec 2010);

The Lowry, Salford, Jock McFadyen Goes to The Lowry: an exhibition 45 years in the making, 16 Oct 2021–27 Feb 2022

CRANE KALMAN

L.S.

CRANE KALMAN GALLERY

Industrial Scene with Monument, 1972

Oil on board, 10.75 x 9.5 ins (27.5 x 24 cms)

Signed and dated lower right

Provenance: Alick Leggat, Lancs.

Private Collection, London, (by descent from the above)

Exhibited: The Lowry, Salford, Lowry’s Movement, 28 Jul–29 Aug 2001;

The Lowry, Salford, At Home with Lowry, Sep 2002–Jan 2003;

The MAC, Belfast, A People Observed, 19 Apr–19 Jun 2012;

London, Tate Britain, Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life, 25 Jun–20 Oct 2013, cat. no. 119, illustrated in colour

CRANE KALMAN GALLERY

The Interrogation, 1962

Oil on canvas, 18 x 24 ins (45.7 x 61 cms)

Signed and dated lower right

Provenance: Monty Bloom, Manchester (acquired directly from the artist);

Crane Kalman Gallery, London; The Schorr Collection, London (acquired from the above in 1971)

Exhibited: Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, Industry and the Artist, Mar 1965, cat. no. 6;

Salford Museum and Art Gallery, Salford, Frape Memorial Exhibition, 29 July–30 Aug 1965;

Arts Council, L.S. Lowry RA, Retrospective Exhibition, toured to Sunderland Art Gallery 27 Aug–17 Sep 1966, Manchester Whitworth Art Gallery 24 Sep–15 Oct 1966, Bristol City Art Gallery 22 Oct–12 Nov 1966, London Tate Gallery 22 Nov 1966–15 Jan 1967, cat. no. 91, illustrated, pl. 30;

Crane Kalman, London, Modern British Paintings, 1 Dec 1970–16 Jan 1971, cat. no. 22, illustrated in b&w, pl. XXXIII

Literature: The Paintings of L.S. Lowry, Oils and Watercolours (Jupiter Books, London, 1975), Mervyn Levy, illustrated in b&w, pl. 73

A woman is scolding a small boy for breaking a pane of glass. Another boy, the real culprit, laughs to himself behind the woman’s back. His sister is ashamed of him for not owning up.

CRANE KALMAN GALLERY

Old Buildings, Edinburgh, 1937

Oil on canvas, 21 x 17 ins (53.3 x 43.2 cms)

Signed and dated lower left

Provenance: The Lefevre Gallery, Alex Reid and Lefevre Ltd, London; Jack Dellal, London; Crane Kalman Gallery, London (acquired from the above in 1980); Private Collection, Beds, UK (acquired from above in 1987); Private Collection, Manchester

Exhibited: The Lefevre Gallery, Alex Reid and Lefevre Ltd, London, Paintings by Josef Herman and L.S. Lowry, Feb–Mar 1943, cat. no. 22;

Corporation of Liverpool Art Gallery, Bluecoat Chambers, Liverpool, Paintings by L.S. Lowry, 18 Oct–6 Nov 1943, cat. no. 38;

Crane Kalman Gallery, London, Modern British Paintings, 29 Nov 1967–15 Jan 1968, cat. no. 25;

Crane Kalman Gallery, London, Modern British Art, 12 July–2nd Sep 2022

L.S. LOWRY

CRANE KALMAN GALLERY

Man seated in the National Gallery, 1967 Oil on board, 9 x 5.5 ins (22.8 x 14cms)

Signed and dated lower right. Inscribed across the top “MAN SEATED IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY”

Provenance: The Lefevre Gallery, Alex Reid and Lefevre Ltd., London; Private Collection, UK; Crane Kalman Gallery, London; Private Collection, London

Spittal Sands, Berwick, 1960 Oil on board, 14.5 x 16.5 ins (37 x 42 cms)

Signed and dated lower left

Provenance: Alick Leggat, Lancs. (likely acquired directly from the artist); Private Collection, London (by descent from the above)

Exhibited: Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, Paintings and Drawings by L.S. Lowry and Graphics by John Nash, 28 Jul–23 Sep 1979, cat. no. 14; Museum and Art Gallery, Salford, L.S. Lowry: The Centenary Exhibition, 16 Oct–29 Nov 1987, cat. no. 186;

The Lowry, Salford, Lowry’s Places, 16 Sep 2000–1 Jan 2001; The Lowry, Salford, At Home with Lowry, Sep 2002–Jan 2003; The Lowry, Salford, Lowry and the Sea, 16 Jul–30 Oct 2005; The Granary Gallery (Berwick Visual Arts), Berwick-upon-Tweed, L.S. Lowry in Berwick and Northumberland, 21 Jun–21 Sep 2014; Jerwood Gallery, Hastings, Lowry by the Sea, 10 Jun–1 Nov 2015

Literature: L.S. Lowry, The Art and the Artist (Unicorn Press, London, 2010), T.G. Rosenthal, p. 112, illustrated in colour

CRANE KALMAN GALLERY

Untitled (Interior with figures), c.1925

Pencil on paper, 14 . x 9.6 ins (36.7 x 24.3 cms)

Provenance: The Estate of L.S. Lowry

It is interesting to speculate what might be happening in the brooding scene depicted in this fine, early drawing. It appears to show a family being admonished by the animated figure on the right of the composition. Perhaps a colleague of Lowry’s from The Pall Mall

Property Company is demanding unpaid rent, warning that further delay may lead to eviction.

L.S.

Lowry’s stove, 1966. Photograph by Clive Arrowsmith, Camera Press London

29.

Man Eating a Sandwich, 1961 Pencil on paper, 10.25 x 6.75 ins (26 x 17 cms) signed, dated and titled lower left

Provenance: Alick Leggat, Lancs.; Private Collection, London (by descent from the above) Exhibited: Baskett and Day, London, Drawings by Lawrence Stephen Lowry, RA, 3–14 Nov 1981, cat. no. 19, sale price £1,200; The Lowry, Salford, Lowry’s People, 28 Apr–28 Aug 2000

Untitled (Large Figure full length in profile), 1968 Pencil on paper, 15.9 x

ins (40.5 x

and dated lower right

cms)

CRANE KALMAN GALLERY

The Haunt, 1969

Oil on board, 6.75 x 5.75 ins (17.1 x 14.6 cms)

Signed and dated lower left

Provenance: The Estate of L.S. Lowry

Exhibited: Royal Academy of Arts, London, L.S. Lowry RA, 1887–1976, 4 Sep–14 Nov 1976, cat. no. 319, illustrated in b&w; The Lowry, Salford, Lowry Favourites, Jul–Nov 2003

Literature: The Paintings of L.S. Lowry, Oils and Watercolours (Jupiter Books, London, 1975), Mervyn Levy, no. 94, illustrated in b&w

Photograph by Clive Arrowsmith, Camera Press London

Head of a Man, 1920 Pencil on paper, 8 x 8 ins (20 x 20 cms)

Signed and dated lower left

Provenance: Wessex Fine Art; Monty Bloom and thence by descent; The Robert Devereux Collection, London; Crane Kalman Gallery (purchased at Christies from the above sale, Nov 2010)

Exhibited: Art Museum of Nanjing University of the Arts, Nanjing, China, L.S. Lowry: Artist of the People, 14 Nov–16 Dec 2013, cat. pp. 21–22, illustrated in colour

CRANE KALMAN GALLERY

Portrait of a man, 1920

Pencil on paper, 8.1

(20.6

initialled and dated lower right and

Provenance: The

Exhibited: The

of

‘Portrait’ lower left

CRANE KALMAN GALLERY

Seascape, 1947

Oil on canvas, 8.75 x 15 ins (22.2 x 38.1 cms)

Signed and dated lower left

Provenance: The Lefevre Gallery, Alex Reid and Lefevre Ltd, London; Crane Kalman Gallery, London; Private Collection, London (purchased from the above in Dec 1966);

Crane Kalman Gallery, London; Private Collection (purchased from the above in Jul 1994); Crane Kalman Gallery, London; Private Collection, London (purchased from the above 2016)

Exhibited: Crane Kalman Gallery, London, A Tribute to L.S. Lowry, 30 Nov–7 Jan 1967, cat. no. 23, illustrated in b&w, pl. XV111; Crane Kalman Gallery, London, L.S. Lowry, A Selection of Masterpieces, 9 Jun–6 Aug 1994, cat. no. 28, illustrated;

Crane Kalman Gallery, London, ‘Silence’ in Painting, 21 Oct–24 Dec 1999, cat. no. 18, illustrated in colour

CRANE KALMAN GALLERY

The Market Place, 1927

Oil on canvas, 16 x 20 ins (40.6 x 50.8 cms)

Signed and dated

Provenance: Crane Kalman Gallery, London; Midland Bank, (acquired from the above 1978); HSBC Holdings, PLC

Exhibited: Salon des Artistes Français, Paris, 1929, no. 1483;

Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, 1930, cat. no. 16;

Crane Kalman Gallery, London, L.S. Lowry –A Centenary Tribute, 29 Oct–28 Nov 1987, cat. no. 5, Illustrated in colour;

Tate Britain, London, Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life, 25 Jun–20 Oct 2013, cat. no. 65, illustrated in colour

Literature: Les Peintres Britanniques Dans Les Salons Parisiens des Origines à 1939 (L’Echelle de Jacob, Dijon, 2003), Beatrice Crespon-Halotier, p. 343, illustrated in b&w

CRANE KALMAN

Figures Talking, undated

Oil on board, 11.6 x 7 ins (29.5 x 18.4 cms)

Provenance: The Estate of L.S. Lowry Private Collection, UK (acquired from Crane Kalman Gallery, 2012)

Exhibition: Crane Kalman Gallery, London, Modern British Art, 17 Mar–20 Mar 2022

CRANE KALMAN GALLERY

Houses and Fencing verso A Sketch of Factories, c.1920

Pastel on paper, 10.2 x 22 ins (26 x 55.7 cms)

(Untitled Factories verso)

Provenance: The Estate of the L.S. Lowry; With Crane Kalman Gallery; Private Collection

Exhibitions: Salford, The Lowry, on long term loan, 2000–2018

CRANE KALMAN GALLERY

Stormy Sea, 1968

Oil on panel, 8.75 x 22.5 ins (22.2 x 57 cms)

Signed and dated lower left

Provenance: Crane Kalman Gallery, London; R.J. Blum (purchased fom the above 1974); Crane Kalman Gallery, London; Alick Leggat, Lancs. (purchased from the above in 1988); Private Collection, London (by descent from the above)

L.S. LOWRY

Exhibited: London, Hamet Gallery, L.S. Lowry, 21 Sep–21 Oct 1972, cat. no. 49, illustrated; Crane Kalman Gallery, London, L.S. Lowry: A Centenary Tribute, 29 Oct–28 Nov 1987, cat. no. 33, illustrated; The Lowry, Salford, Lowry’s Places, 16 Sep 2000–1 Jan 2001; The Lowry, Salford, At Home with Lowry, Sep 2002–Jan 2003; The Lowry, Salford, Lowry and the Sea, 16 Jul–30 Oct 2005; The Lowry, Salford, The Sea: L.S. Lowry and Maggi Hambling, 17 Oct 2009–31 Jan 2010; Hastings, Jerwood Gallery, Lowry by the Sea, 10 Jun–1 Nov 2015;

Literature: Lowry, A Visionary Artist (Lowry Press, Salford, 2000), Michael Howard, pp. 243, 244, illustrated in colour; L.S. Lowry, The Art and the Artist (Unicorn Press, London, 2010), T.G. Rosenthal, p. 296, illustrated in colour

CRANE KALMAN

CRANE KALMAN GALLERY

The Grey Sea, 1953 Oil on board, 20.3 x 29.1 ins (51.5 x 74 cms)

Signed and dated lower left

Provenance: Dorothy Kalman (acquired directly from the artist) Private Collection, London (acquired from the above / Crane Kalman Gallery, Jul 1977)

Exhibited: Crane Kalman Gallery, London, 1977

CRANE KALMAN GALLERY

Ship Entering Prince’s Dock, Glasgow, 1947

Oil on canvas, 21.5 x 18 ins (54.5 x 45.6 cms)

Signed and dated lower right

Provenance: With Crane Kalman Gallery

Alick Leggat, Lancs. (purchased from the above 1966); Private Collection, London (by descent from the above)

Exhibited: Royal Academy of Arts, London, L.S. Lowry RA, 1887–1976, 4 Sep–14 Nov 1976, cat. no. 173;

The Lowry, Salford, Lowry’s Places, 16 Sep 2000–1 Jan 2001;

The Lowry, Salford, Double Vision, 15 Jan–Dec 2005;

The Lowry, Salford, Lowry and the Sea, 16 Jul–30 Oct 2005;

The Lowry, Salford, The Art of White, 12 Nov 2005–17 Apr 2006;

Djanogly Art Gallery, Lakeside Arts Centre, Nottingham, Lowry, 16 Nov 2011–5 Feb 2012, cat. no. 81, illustrated in colour;

Jerwood Gallery, Hastings, Lowry by the Sea, 10 Jun–1 Nov 2015

Photograph by Clive Arrowsmith, Camera Press London

L.S. Lowry and Crane Kalman Gallery: 70 Years of Exhibitions, Publications and Projects

John,

Works by

Gertler,

Duncan Grant,

Nicholson, W.R

Ethel Walker,

Year Month Gallery Title

5 1968 7–30 Nov 1968

Crane Kalman Gallery, London The loneliness of L.S. Lowry

1972 5 Dec 1972–20 Jan 1973 Crane Kalman Gallery, London A Selection of British Paintings

1975 4 Nov–6 Dec 1975 Crane Kalman Gallery, London L.S. Lowry: A Selection of 36 Paintings

6 1977 1–15 Dec 1977

Crane Kalman Gallery at the Mills, Streets and Inns … Paintings 1830–1970 Burlington International Fine Art Fair, The Royal Academy, London

1978–1979 29 Nov 1978–27 Jan 1979 Crane Kalman Gallery, London Mills and Inns, Rivers and Streets of England

7 1979 15 Mar–12 Apr 1979 Crane Kalman Gallery, London L.S. Lowry (1887–1976) and Alan Lowndes (1921–1978)

1982 10 Mar–18 Apr 1982 Crane Kalman Gallery, London Thirty-two Major Works by L.S. Lowry (1887–1976)

2003 5 Jul–5 Oct 2003 Crane Kalman Gallery, London L.S. Lowry: Conversation Pieces 14 Oct–1 Nov 2003 The Lowry, Salford

2004 8 Jun–31 Jul 2004 Crane Kalman Gallery, London British Landscape Painting in the Twentieth Century

2006 10 Nov 2005–16 Jan 2006 Crane Kalman Gallery, London Marine: Paintings of the Sea

2010 16 Nov–18 Dec 2010 Crane Kalman Gallery, London The Estate of L.S. Lowry: A Selection of Works

2010 17 Jul–31 Oct 2010 Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal The Loneliness of Lowry 16 Nov–18 Dec 2010 Crane Kalman Gallery, London

13 2011 Looking for Lowry directed by Margy Kinmonth, Foxtrot Films, London (www.foxtrotfilms.com)

2012–2013 12 Nov 2012–26 Jan 2013 Crane Kalman Gallery, London The Estate of L.S. Lowry: A Selection of Works 14 2014 14 Nov–16 Dec 2014 Art museum of Nanjing University L.S. Lowry: Artist of the People of the Arts No. 4 Hall co–organised by Crane Kalman Gallery, London

L.S. Lowry paintings in Public Collections in the UK

Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums

Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum of Wales

Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London

Atkinson Art Gallery Collection, Southport

Bexhill Museum

Birmingham Museums Trust Bradford Museums and Galleries

British Council Collection

Buxton, Derbyshire Museums Service

Derby Museums and Art Gallery

Fife Council

Glasgow City Art Gallery and Museums (Seascape, 1950, purchased from Crane Kalman in 1991 for £50,000)

The Government Art Collection

Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston (Millworkers, 1948, purchased from Crane Kalman in 1994 for £49,000)

Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry

Imperial War Museums, London/Manchester

Jerwood Collection, Hastings

Keele University Art Collection

Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge Kirklees Museums and Galleries

Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle Lakeland Arts Trust, Kendal, Cumbria

Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum

Leeds Museums and Galleries

Leicester Arts and Museums,

New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester

Manchester City Art Galleries

Middlesborough Council Museums

National Maritime Museum, London (The Power Station, Greenwich, purchased from Crane Kalman in 1976 for £8,500)

National Museums Liverpool - Walker Art Gallery

National Museums Northern Ireland

National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh (Canal and Factories, 1955, purchased from Crane Kalman in 1975 for £22,000)

The National Trust, UK

Newport Museum and Art Gallery Norfolk Museums

Nottingham City Museums and Galleries

Rochdale Arts and Heritage Services

The Royal Academy of Arts, London Rugby Art Gallery and Museum Art Science Museum, London (A Manufacturing Town, 1922, purchased from Crane Kalman in 1982)

Stockport Heritage Services

Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens Swindon Art Gallery

Tate

The Hepworth, Wakefield

The Lowry, Salford

The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Salford, Manchester

York Museums Trust

L.S. Lowry paintings in Public Collections outside the UK

Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

Setagaya Museum, Tokyo, Japan (The Footbridge, 1936, purchased from Crane Kalman in 1987 for £38,000)

Dunedin Public Art Gallery, New Zealand

Christchurch Art Gallery, New Zealand

Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin, USA (Island House, 1943 and Near Glencoe, 1960 purchased from Crane Kalman by Mrs. Harry Lynde Bradley in 1976 for $16,000 and gifted to the Museum by Jane Bradley Pettit in 1980)

Yale Centre for British Art, Connecticut, USA

Acknowledgements

In no particular order but in equal measure of deep gratitude for their contributions to this exhibition and catalogue, I would like to thank Richard Grossick – The Estate of L.S. Lowry, Catalogue Raisonné Project, Claire Stewart and Michael Simpson at The Lowry, Clive and Eugenie Arrowsmith, Dr. Lisa Hillier, Daniel Lancaster, Howard Jacobson, Jenny de Yong and all of the anonymous lenders.

Clive Arrowsmith studied Art and Design in North Wales. He soon gravitated to photography and in 1966, was commissioned by Nova magazine to photograph L.S. Lowry. Quickly charming the artist with his wit and art knowledge, Lowry invited Clive into his home and a two day shoot followed, resulting in a wonderful, intimate and unique portfolio of images.

Arrowsmith went on to forge an acclaimed career as a portrait and fashion photographer, working for British and French Vogue, Harper’s, Vanity Fair, Esquire, The Pirelli Calendars and many more. However, his original Lowry negatives were mislaid until recently rediscovered in an attic. They were published in 2017, for the first time since 1966, in Lowry At Home by Clive Arrowsmith (ACC Art Books, Woodbridge, Suffolk).

All works of art by L.S. Lowry courtesy © The Estate of L.S. Lowry All Rights Reserved, DACS 2022

Cat. no. 24, The Interrogation courtesy © Martin Bloom Cat. no. 32, Head of a Man © Martin Bloom All Rights Reserved, DACS 2022

Cover: The Spire,

in middle-age, c

Studio’s,

in his studio,

Printing by Pureprint Group, Uxbridge Designed by Matthew Wilson / mexington.co.uk

Courtesy @ Camera Press