Page 23 - Studio International - November 1966

L. S. Lowry : an unclassifiable genius

T. G. Rosenthal

The Tate Gallery's L. S. Lowry, like most painters of genius, is unclassifiable;
L. S. Lowry Retrospective furthermore, like most outstanding human beings, he is
is from November 26 to
January 15 subtle and elusive when one wants to set him down on
paper. It is not usually either polite, politic or even useful
to mingle criticism—particularly art criticism—with per-
sonal reminiscence but, in the case of Lowry, that old
critical war-horse about the style being the man is such a
truth, rather than a truism, that I hope a certain amount
of personal impression will be forgiven.
The first time I met Lowry was in the winter of 1959
when he was at the beginning of his seventies, looked
about sixty and painted and spoke with all the energy and
control of fifty. The meeting was, at the beginning, a
sticky one in that I was taken along to Lowry's small stone
house in the Cheshire village of Mottram-in-Longden-
dale, not far from Manchester, by a mutual friend. We
were not expected and Lowry seemed perturbed that he
should have to receive us in the battered paint-splashed Photo : Tony Evans
old grey suit that looked as if it had once done sterling
Born in 1887 in Manchester, Laurence Stephen Lowry has
service for Gulley Jimson. We sat in the front room lived his life close to the industrial landscape of Manchester
making desultory, and not very meaningful, conversation
and gradually the personal temperature dropped to much
the same level as the North Country winter which had
contrived to creep into the house. Looking desperately
for some topic that could possibly drive out some of the
chill, I found it on the wall opposite my chair and
expressed my warm admiration for a classically beautiful
drawing, perhaps the best I have ever seen in private
hands, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Immediately, Lowry's
face came alive and, searchingly, he tested my responses
to this drawing in particular and to Rossetti in general.
Having found me to be, at the least, not wanting in
respect for his idol he then turned to the several clocks of
various sizes and styles with which the room was decora-
ted and, having found in me a suitable respect for these
often beautiful pieces, he went on to tell us a series of
anecdotes connected with their purchase which had all
the vigour and the mocking, occasionally self-mocking,
satire of that much under-rated comedian of a few years
back, Al Read. The thaw was now complete and shortly
I received the accolade of a diffident inquiry as to

Self-portrait 1925
Oil on board
22 1/2 x 18 1/2 in. 18 1/2 in.
City of Salford Art Gallery
229