LS Lowry believed his paintings would be worthless, interviews reveal | LS Lowry
In a previously unheard interview, LS Lowry said he was convinced his paintings would be worthless after his death.
Although the artist enjoyed some success in his later years, Lowry could never have imagined that he would become one of Britain’s best-loved artists or that his paintings would sell for millions of pounds.
His 1953 painting Going to the Match, depicting crowds of spectators flocking to a football stadium, sold for £7.8 million in 2022.
Half a century after his death, he is now played by Sir Ian McKellen in the BBC documentary LS Lowry: The Unheard Tapes, which makes use of previously unheard audio recordings.
Described as “the last words of a great artist” who was an intensely private man, McKellen will lip-sync his dialogue.
In the tapes, the artist can be heard saying: “One day, walking down a street, you may look in the window of a secondhand shop. You will see a picture upside down, cheap, with 30 shillings written on it. And it will be mine.”
Over a four-year period from 1972, Lowry gave his longest and most illuminating interview to a young admirer, Angela Barratt. He died in 2022 and the tapes remained hidden at his home in Manchester. They have never been published until now.
Lowry bared his soul at her. He admitted that his family and friends teased him about his pictures. “I didn’t make any money,” he said. “People laughed heartily at them… All my friends would joke about it: ‘How’s the art business?’; ‘Are you making a fortune from this?’; ‘Don’t be so stupid, why don’t you give up?’”
At 17, Lowry was enrolled in evening art classes. When he sold his first painting, he said: “It was in 1921. And I got £5 for it. I was 34… My family had the shock of their lives when I sold it. They couldn’t believe I could sell anything.”
When asked if he liked his mother’s paintings, Lowry replied: “No, I don’t think so. And my father, too.” [who worked as a clerk for an estate agent] If I sold a painting, I would go into hysterics. He couldn’t understand that.”
Lowry was discouraged: “Most of the time I was just very, very fed up. I said over and over what was the point of doing this?”
Yet Lowry is beloved by the public for his unique depictions of working-class urban life, mill scenes and industrial landscapes in the north of England, full of distinctive matchstick men.
When his family ran into financial difficulties, they moved to Pendlebury in Salford, which was then devastated by pollution, noise and poverty: “For a long time I didn’t like it at all, I couldn’t get used to it. Then I was fascinated. After a while I started thinking, has anyone painted this scene? And I found out they hadn’t.”
Asked if he preferred an “industrial” outlook over “beautiful places”, he replied: “I don’t like the south of England, if that’s what you mean. It’s harmless. There’s no guts in it… It’s dull… It’s a terrible place.”
Lowry worked as a rent collector for the same Manchester property company for 42 years. He was afraid that if people knew his day job, they would assume that he only painted in his spare time and was therefore an amateur. He really wanted to be taken seriously.
One of his friends says in the documentary that they only learned about his work after he died. “Someone told us, and frankly, we didn’t believe it. We thought he was wrong. It was a little bit hurtful that someone was so close to this guy and felt like he was keeping a secret.”
When Barratt paid tribute to him “for putting the industrial scene on the map” [with] these are wonderful pictures”, Lowry humbly replied: “That is very nice. “Thank you for that.”
He added: “I feel my painting, I did my best.”
