PROVENANCE
The Artist
Monty Bloom Esq
Sale, Christie's London, 11th May 1973, lot 112
Lord Lloyd-Webber
His sale, Sotheby's London, 1st December 1999, lot 41
Acquired by the present owners in early 2000
EXHIBITED
Sheffield, Graves Art Gallery, L. S. Lowry, A.R.A.: An Exhibition of Paintings, Watercolours and Drawings,
15th September - 14th October 1962, cat. no.95B, lent by the Artist (as Man Out for a Walk);
Newcastle Upon Tyne, Stone Gallery, The Later Paintings of L.S. Lowry from the Monty Bloom Collection,
23rd October - 14th November 1964, cat. no.25 (as Man Out Walking);
Southport, Atkinson Art Gallery, The Bloom Collection, 1967;
London, Crane Kalman Gallery, The Loneliness of L.S. Lowry, 7th - 30th November 1968, cat. no. 20
( as Man Out Walking) (probably);
London, Hamet Gallery, L.S. Lowry, 21st September - 21st October 1972, cat. no.35, illustrated
(as Man Out Walking).
LITERATURE
Shelley Rhode, L. S. Lowry: a Biography, Lowry Press, Manchester, 1999, illustrated p.265;
Meet Mr Lowry, documentary film produced by Mischa Scorer and commissioned by The Lowry,1999;
When Piers Met Andrew Lloyd Webber, documentary film produced by ITV Press, 9th April 2011.
In 1961, Lowry had an exhibition of his work at the Lefevre Gallery.
There was nothing unusual in this;
Lowry had been showing his work there regularly since 1939.
However, this time the exhibition sold out before it opened.
Ignored for years, his reputation had risen slowly through the 1940s and 1950s and his
appeal to collectors had grown. He was by now an R.A. and, unknown to virtually everyone, had turned down both an O.B.E and a C.B.E.
Yet much of his popularity was built on his success with the industrial scene, the 'typical' Lowry, and as
has happened for so many artists, he came to resent this perception of his work and its extent:
'In London all they want now are pictures with little figures on them'
(The Artist, quoted in Shelly Rohde, A Private View of L.S.Lowry, Collins, London 1979, p.240).
Whilst the industrial landscape had been at the heart of Lowry's art through the years of obscurity and struggle, its centrality had waned in his own mind. By the time he left Pendlebury in 1948 he had already begun to paint images where the place was of less and less importance, the people being the centre of his attention.
By 1952 and his retirement from the Pall Mall Property Company, his industrial landscapes were becoming ever more idealised, either as a standard mill/chimney/street compositional form, or the huge sweeping composite views of industrial panoramas. His relationship to the industrial landscape and his need to paint it were shifting.
Yet his audience still wanted the industrial vision. Lowry seems to have worried that the loss of the meaning of the subject to him would be reflected in the paintings; but it was not to be, hence the sell-out show in 1961 and his continued popularity. But he did know that he wanted to produce something else. He wanted to paint people, figures he had seen, met, observed. People whose lives were not easy, people burdened by cares, misfortune, disability. He was at pains to ensure that no-one should think he was laughing at these souls, merely hoping to capture something that spoke to him, perhaps an echo of his own perceived 'otherness', his place outside the normal lives he saw many of his friends living. His belief was that no-one else would appreciate this other vision.
Lowry's meeting with Monty Bloom was thus perhaps one of the more fortuitous of his life. Bloom had initially sought to commission an industrial landscape, but on visiting the artist found himself distracted by the figure paintings he saw. Lowry laid out about twelve, Bloom picked six and a price was agreed. By the standard of his gallery prices, the £90 Lowry asked was minute, but that wasn't the point. He had found someone who saw in these paintings his particular vision. Bloom's buying continued, to the point where his wife forbade any more pictures entering the house and he had to keep them in the boot of his car. His compulsion to buy these Lowry paintings was only equalled by the artist's compulsion to paint them, and he was to build a formidable collection.
Acquired by Bloom around 1963, Man Walking is a perfect example of exactly the kind of image that Lowry was now creating. There is a backdrop, but is it just that, devoid of detail and colour. It is the figure before us who is the focus. He walks along the street, quite happy to be thinking of something entirely apart from the here and now. This thought amuses him, and puts a spring in his step. He manages to be sprightly yet ungainly, determined yet aimless.
Questioned about these paintings by his long-standing friend Hugh Maitland, Lowry suggested that he felt that he had to bring these figures, who he believed were either marginalised or simply ignored, to a place where they would be acknowledged, and in Man Walking he has done this. There is no judgement here, just recognition of this unknown man without which he would have faded from memory.
Throughout the early years L.S.Lowry lived in Victoria Park, the suburbs of Manchester. Due to lack of money
the family moved to Station Road, Pendlebury.
There, the tree lined streets changed to factory chimneys. Lowry recalled "At first I detested it, and then,
after years, became pretty interested in it, eventually obsessed by it."
he saw the subjects for his paintings all around him. In Lowry's later life, L.S.L. recalled a particular event.
"One day after missing a train from Pendlebury (a local town) I had ignored for seven years, and on leaving
the station, saw the Acme Spinning Company's mill.
The huge black framework of rows of yellow lit windows standing up against the sad, damp charged afternoon sky.
The mill was turning out. "Gazing at this scene, which I'd looked at many times without seeing, with rapture."
A writer in The Guardian newspaper, Bernard Taylor, recognised the unique quality of Lowry paintings, when he reviewed an early exhibition. "Mr Laurence S Lowry has a very interesting and individual outlook. Lowry subjects are Manchester and Lancashire street scenes, interpreted with technical means as yet imperfect, but with real imagination. We hear a great deal nowadays about recovering the simplicity of vision of primitives in art. These pictures are authentically primitive, the real thing not an artificially cultivated likeness to it. The problems of representation are solved not by reference to established conventions, but by sheer determination to express what the artist has felt. Whether the result is according to rule or not..."
Lowry worked as rent collector for the Pall Mall Property Company, prefering to keep the work secret. Lowry did not want people to think of him as a part-time artist. The job led to Lowry walking all over the city providing L.S.Lowry with many sights and experiences. Children playing in the streets, people returning from work, going off to work, gossip on the front steps, incidents, market places and Whit - processions. But all this changed, the blitz and rebuilding, slum clearances and new housing, changed the face of the city Lowry had observed so well. "I saw the industrial scene and was affected by it. Trying to draw it all the time and trying to express the industrial scene as well as possible. It wasn't easy, well, a camera could have done the scene straight off".
Lowry felt that drawings were as hard to do as paintings. Working the surface of the drawings by smudging, erasing and rubbing the pencil lines on the paper to build the atmosphere of the drawing. This artist would often make quick sketches on the spot on whatever paper he had in his pockets. L.S.Lowry carefully composed his pictures in a painting room at home and took great care over placing each figure. Late in life he would sit before a canvas or board on his easel and not know what was going to be in the painting until he started working. He called them "dreamscapes". Bernard Taylor made the suggestion that helped Lowry achieve the stark figures and the pallor of the industrial sky that he desired. Taylor suggested Lowry painted on a pure white background. He experimented with layers of white paint on boards, leaving them for a time until the surface became creamy.
LS Lowry used a very basic range of colours, which he mixed on his palette and painted on the white background. "I am a simple man, and use simple materials: ivory, black, vermilion (red), Prussian blue, yellow ochre, flake white and no medium (e.g. linseed oil). That's all I've ever used in my paintings. I like oils... I like a medium you can work into over a period of time". Looking closely at the surface of a Lowry painting shows us the variety of ways he worked the paint with brushes (using both ends), with his fingers and with sticks or a nail. Some paintings are painted over the suface of other images. The 1938 painting Head of a Man (Man with Red Eyes) when x-rayed showed a female portrait and possibly a self-portrait underneath. Someone once asked,"What do you do with your old suits?" "Wear them", came the reply! Lowry certainly wore them for work, wiping the brushes on his lapels and sleeves.
In 1932 the father of Lowry died . For the next seven years, his 73 year old mother became 'bed fast' and completely ruled the life of Lowry. After she died in 1939, Lowry painted "The Bedroom Pendlebury" - in memory of those long hours he spent there. Demanding a great deal of his attention, Lowry would usually only manage to arrive at his studio after dark. "My mother did not understand my art, but she understood me and that was enough" Lowry said.
These were years of isolation and growing despair, reflected in the paintings of Lowry. They depict derelict buildings and wastelands as mirrors of himself. As an official war artist - himself emotionally blitzed - Lowry drew the ruined shells of bombed-out buildings. In 1939, the year Mrs Lowry died - the person he most wanted to please - success came with the first London exhibition. "When the mother of Lowry died, all interest was lost, continuing to paint was the greatest salvation".
Just when this northern artist began to have success, Lowry was moving away from the subjects that everybody wanted him to produce. "If it were not for lonleness, none of my works would have happened". Some of the most powerful paintings by Lowry are deserted landscapes and seascapes. Some of the most difficult pictures to enjoy are of solitary figures and downs and outs. "These people affect me in a way that the industrial scene never did. They are real people, sad people. Sadness attracts me, and there are some very sad things. similar feelings in myself".
Everything came too late for Lowry, but the later years saw the British artist become a popular celebrity. Lowry also became preoccupied about whether his art would last. "Will I live", he asked over and over again, like the art of the Pre-Raphaelites Lowry collected and loved, "I painted from childhood to childhood". Lowry became an old man - often protesting to interviewers that he had "given up, packed it in".
LSLowry died aged 88 in 1976 just months before a retrospective exhibition of his paintings opened at the Royal Academy. It broke all attendance records for a twentieth century artist. Critical opinion about Lowry remains divided to this day. Salford Museum & Art Gallery began collecting the artist's work in 1936 and gradually built up the collection which is now at the heart of the award-winning building bearing the artist's name. Celebrating his art and transforming the cityscape again. A small quantity of paintings by the artist l.s. lowry were published as signed limited edition prints. Some of the most well known being, 'Going to the match', Man lying on a wall, Huddersfield, Deal, ferry boats, three cats Alstow, Berwick-on-Tweed, peel park, The two brothers, View of a town, Street scene.
