THE WORKS OF LAWRENCE STEPHEN LOWRY
For this assignment, I am going to discuss the artist Lawrence Stephen Lowry who painted various different styles, but I will be focussing particularly upon his industrial urban scenes of Manchester in England around about the first half of the twentieth century. Around this period, he had adopted a style of painting busy crowd scenes in which he painted 'matchstick people' within his hometown settings. Critics have on occasions referred to these paintings as 'childlike', and it is the origins of this area of his art that I wish to discuss.
When Lawrence Lowry reached the age of fifteen years old, his aunt suggested that he went to art school, as he was no good for anything else, she said. So, he attended Salford Royal Technical College at Peel Park in Manchester until some time in the 1920s. Far from being a naïve 'Sunday painter', as was the view of some, Lowry was an artist looking for his own distinctive way of painting and drawing.
The Lowry on Salford Quays
Lowry
The Lowry, Salford, Greater Manchester, England.He searched for something he could make his own and would rather draw something he could see from the college window than the model that was posing for the class.
Earlier in his life, he had lived in a nice part of town, but lack of money forced him, together with his parents to move to Pendlebury, which was strewn with factory chimneys and rows of cramped terraced houses. It was on one day, after living there for about seven years, that he missed his train, and whilst waiting for the next he sat watching a mass of people coming out of a great dark building. It was the 'turning out' of the Spinning Company's mill. He watched the process as if seeing it for the first time, and...