Steve Taylor (Photography)
Factory at Widnes by L.S. Lowry
Laurence Stephen Lowry painted Factory at Widnes in 1956. If appreciation for his individualistic painting style was widespread, there was also fascination with L.S. Lowry the artist, who had projected in the press the image of a lonely recluse.
Though Lowry was less reclusive than his public persona, such an image was not without basis. A gangling figure with strong features and thick, cropped silvering hair, always dressed as if ready for the office, Lowry was a teetotaller who never married, and never owned a car, a television or telephone. In his brick house in Mottram-in-Longdendale near Manchester he surrounded himself with clocks, all set at different times. He was also intensely private, and throughout his life studiously kept friends unaware of each other.
A greater fiction he maintained was that he had never worked at anything but his art, while in fact he had been in paid employment since his teens, having retired in 1952 on full pension after 42 years with the same company - as a rent collector and clerk. Sensitive to opinions that might regard him as anything but a serious painter, Lowry guarded jealously his slowly-wrought success. It was not until his death that the public learned of the artist's unique industrial vision having been developed as he traversed Manchester on foot as a rent collector, committing wry and sundry observations to notebook or memory before their working into paintings in evenings and on weekends.
They should do a new film or TV serial about his life.
Factory at Widnes by L.S. Lowry
Laurence Stephen Lowry painted Factory at Widnes in 1956. If appreciation for his individualistic painting style was widespread, there was also fascination with L.S. Lowry the artist, who had projected in the press the image of a lonely recluse.
Though Lowry was less reclusive than his public persona, such an image was not without basis. A gangling figure with strong features and thick, cropped silvering hair, always dressed as if ready for the office, Lowry was a teetotaller who never married, and never owned a car, a television or telephone. In his brick house in Mottram-in-Longdendale near Manchester he surrounded himself with clocks, all set at different times. He was also intensely private, and throughout his life studiously kept friends unaware of each other.
A greater fiction he maintained was that he had never worked at anything but his art, while in fact he had been in paid employment since his teens, having retired in 1952 on full pension after 42 years with the same company - as a rent collector and clerk. Sensitive to opinions that might regard him as anything but a serious painter, Lowry guarded jealously his slowly-wrought success. It was not until his death that the public learned of the artist's unique industrial vision having been developed as he traversed Manchester on foot as a rent collector, committing wry and sundry observations to notebook or memory before their working into paintings in evenings and on weekends.
They should do a new film or TV serial about his life.