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Google has recently paid tribute to the birth of L.S. Lowry well known British artist Laurence Stephen Lowry, 125 years after his birth.
Born in Lancashire he is famous for his drawings of industrial landscapes in north England and matchstick style figures.
He lived and worked in the Salford area and around Pendlebury, for over 40 yrs.
Google made it's homepage in the image of one of Lowry's landscape paintings which shows the current day's importance of this artist. Laurence Stephen Lowry the Lancashire artist, well known by many as L.S. Lowry, was honoured by Google with a doodle to celebrate his birthday, one hundred and twenty five years ago.
In the style of Lowry's well known 'industrial landscapes', Google made a statement using a drawing on its homepage to pay homage to this great artist.
This year will be a major event for Lowry's work; The Tate Britain is showing the 1st major exhibition of Lowry's work, since he died in 1976.
Approximately 80 paintings and drawings will be on display, which will undoubtedly greatly increase the value and popularity of his work.
Lowry's paintings, drawings and signed prints have already become a major investment in recent years.
It is amusing to think how Lowry may consider the recent honours for his paintings.
He apparently holds the record for declining the most honours.
A large gallery 'The Lowry' in Manchester cost £106 million and was built in his honour in the year two thousand.
permanent display there are dozens of drawings and 55 paintings
The life and work of L.S.Lowry Salford's artist
Laurence Stephen Lowry began life in Rusholme, Manchester, November 1887, the only child of Mr R S Lowry from Ireland and his wife Elizabeth (maiden name; Hobson).
He attended a neighborhood school in Victoria Park, but took private classes from William Fitz, before begining his work as a clerk for an agency of chartered accountants in 1904,
that would show him the many sights he would later use for his paintings.
From 1905-1915 Lowry attended drawing and painting courses at the Municipal College of Artwork (later Manchester College of Art, now a part of Manchester Metropolitan University), where Lowry was tutored by the now well known an highly regarded artist, Adolphe Valette.
Lowry moved to Pendlebury in Salford together with his parents in 1909, for almost forty years Lowry lived here. Throughout this time Lowry attended art classes at Salford School of Art, growing a strange, almost morbid curiosity for the city and industrial landscape. Lowry was fascinated by its people, who toiled night and day against incredible odds, to make a living for themselves, working long hours in terrible conditions, with little to show financially. Large families living in small terrace houses with barely sufficient food, and the Fever Van never far away.
Lowry exhibited with the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts from 1919, as well as showing paintings in the Paris Salon. By the early 1930s Lowry was exhibiting at the 'Royal Academy', London, and was awarded an honorary Master of Art at Manchester College in 1945, and Doctor of Letters in 1961. In 1962 he was elected to the Royal Academy, and given freedom of the City of Salford in 1965.
Lowry lived in Mottram till he died in 1976; the people of Manchester showed an unprecedented homage to this great master of art.
L.S. Lowry is without doubt, one of the most celebrated of British artists and his unique contribution to recording the interval, tradition and panorama of commercial Salford and Manchester is without parallel.
His work is a most distinctive and comprehensive report of the pre and post World War Two northern industrial towns. Many people affiliate Lowry with "matchstick figures", but he's recognized to have produced over 10,000 works, ranging from completed oil paintings to swiftly drawn sketches.
The local industrial scenes were his most frequent topics but Lowry additionally painted seascapes and portraits. Lowry was an amazing humorist and had intense insight into human nature, characterising it without sentiment. Later in his life Lowry worked on producing paintings of figures either singly or collectively, invariably in opposition to a white background.
Lowry also produced thousands of pencil drawings throughout his lifetime, these have become very collectable and the most effective ones are very professionally drawn.
In 1976 Lowry died at hospital from pneumonia, with no registered physician.
L.S. Lowry had little time for the financial sharks that would 'hound' him on a daily basis, and the galleries hoping to inherit a number of works in Lowry's will, they kept in close contact with him throughout his old age, only to learn that Lowry had left all his paintings to a lady, with the same surname (Carol Ann), who had written him a letter when she was a young girl, asking how she may learn to be an artist.
Lowry's standing as one of the foremost British artists of the 20th Century was strengthened when the painting "Going To The Match" was sold for a record
£1.9 million to the Manchester based 'Professional Footballers Association'.
Manchester's newly built museum gallery, The Centre in Salford Quays, now holds a major collection of his work.
There are relatively few signed prints now available. Many artists such as David Shepherd
signed hundreds of titles, and each edition can sometimes be in excess of a thousand.
But Lowry agreed to only fifty four signed prints, and each title ranged from 95 to 850 in the edition. (75 in the case of the lithograph signed prints)
Once the signed prints had been published, the work was copyrighted and the original printing plates were destroyed so that apart from the original painting
only the agreed number of signed prints were produced.
Needless to say that after 50 or so years , from an edition of 850, there are a mere fraction of the edition that still exists in good condition.
Many will have been lost damaged (often by the glass breaking), being stored in damp conditions or the case of several titles,
fading, due to the printers who have not used the lightfast inks and acid free paper.
The highest price for one of the Lowry's paintings was £1.9 million when 'Going To The Match' was sold in 1999.
Later in 2007, the sale of the Lowry's painting "Daisy Nook Fair" achieved £3.8m.
May, 2011 "The Football Match" painting (not 'Going to the match') by Lowry was sold for £5,641,250.
November, 2011 The 1960 painting of 'Piccadilly Circus' by L.S.Lowry was sold for £5,641,250
Recently the 'Going to the Match' painting has been valued at £6,000,000-10,000,000
