As its snowing and i'm stuck at home I thought I would share my love of L S LOWRY - a beautiful northern soul :)
Laurence Stephen "L.S." Lowry (1 November 1887 – 23 February 1976) was an English artist born in Stretford,Lancashire. Many of his drawings and paintings depict Pendlebury, where he lived and worked for more than 40 years and also Salford and its surrounding areas.
Lowry is famous for painting scenes of life in the industrial districts of North West England in the mid-20th century. He developed a distinctive style of painting and is best known for his urban landscapes peopled with human figures often referred to as "matchstick men". He painted mysterious unpopulated landscapes, brooding portraits and the unpublished "marionette" works, which were only found after his death.
Due to his use of stylised figures and the lack of weather effects in many of his landscapes he is sometimes characterised as a naïve[1] "Sunday painter", although this is not the position of the galleries that have organised retrospectives of his works.[2][3][4][5]
A large collection of Lowry's work is on permanent public display in the Lowry, a purpose-built art gallery on Salford Quays named after him. Lowry rejected five honours during his life – including a knighthood in 1968 and consequently holds the record for the most rejected British honours.[6] On 26 June 2013 a major retrospective opened at the Tate Britain inLondon, his first at the Tate, and in 2014 his first solo exhibition outside the UK was held in Nanjing, China. [7]
A short BBC documentary on the man himself
Lowry in Stockport
Tate shots - A great little piece from the Tate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eqGqiT3NNo
A contemporary of L S LOWRY
Harry Rutherford
A Northern Saturday (Hyde, Cheshire 1948)
Harry Rutherford (1903-1985) was a British painter who is regarded as one of the most important painters of the "Northern School"[1] a group, led by L. S. Lowry which depicted the post-industrial changes around North West England. He was the first artist to have a television programme and later became President of the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts.[2]
Harry Rutherford was born on Market Street, Denton, Manchester, the youngest of four sons of hat trimmer William Rutherford and his wife Mary Swindells. The manufacture of hats was a local industry based around Hyde and Stockport and it was to Hyde that the family moved in or around 1905.
Rutherford left school at 14, but while still there attended the Hyde School of Art and continued his studies at the Manchester School of Art under Pierre Adolphe Valette, among his fellow pupils was Lowry. In 1925 Rutherford was the first and youngest pupil to enrol in Walter Sickert's new school of art in Manchester. His association with Sickert was lifelong and Sickert referred to Rutherford as "my intellectual heir and successor."[4]
In 1931 Rutherford moved to London where the emergence of the new medium of television produced opportunities thanks to his ability to sketch rapidly. From 1937 to 1939 Rutherford appeared regularly in the BBC's Cabaret Cartoons [5] where he drew the performers of variety shows as they did their act. From 1950-1956, he starred in his own programme, Harry Rutherford's Sketchbook.[6]
While exhibiting in numerous London galleries, he was invited to hold a series of exhibitions in Borneo in 1957, becoming the first western artist to do so.
He returned to Hyde in the late 1950s to 17 Nelson Street and was elected President of MAFA. In his later years, he taught at the Regional College of Art in Manchester and his pupils included the internationally renowned painter Geoffrey Key.
Below is a particular favourite of mine -
The Red Caravan
This painting shows a caravan parked amongst the houses near Rutherford's studio. The composition is blocked and partly abstract; on the left the houses are dissolved into blocks of colour, on the right side the two ladies linking arms are painted as rough squares, whilst a man bending over the caravan’s stairs has become triangular in shape.
I really like this piece of work as it shows the caravan that my Grandad lived in as a child (My Grandad travelled with the fair).
The block feel and chalky colours are indicative of Rutherford's later works.
