I feel i have been neglecting the practical work of the course, and instead visiting museums and a couple of exhibtions and also taking loads of photographs.
So in the next few days, before I return to work, I am concentrating on the Excercises in Project 1 (A creative approach). I am up to Exercise 3 and finding this exercise time consuming but enjoyable.
There was a small exhibition of L.S Lowry paintings and sketches in the Museum too. Unfortunately, once again I was not allowed to take pictures, so I made a couple of sketches of what was on show.
Lowry is famous for painting scenes of life in the industrial areas of North West England in the mid-20th century. He never studied at art college full-time, but did attend evening art classes for many years in Manchester. Lowry had a day job as a rent collector but tried to keep this under wraps as he did not want to become known as a “Sunday Painter”. He looked after his ill Mother for several years and painted in the evenings when she had gone to bed.
In later years, Lowry spent holidays at the Seaburn Hotel in Sunderland which was then in County Durham, painting scenes of Seaburn beach and nearby ports and coal mines.
“When he had no sketchbook, Lowry drew scenes in pencil or charcoal on the back of envelopes, serviettes and cloakroom tickets and presented them to young people sitting with their families. Such serendipitous pieces are now worth thousands of pounds; a serviette sketch can be seen at the Sunderland Mariott Hotel (formerly the Seaburn Hotel)”.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._S._Lowry
Sketches
I was surprised at how basic Lowry’s sketches were. However, these are the first well-known artists’ sketches I have looked at.
1. I made a rough copy of his Bamburgh Castle (1959) sketch, which originally was done in pencil and ballpoint pen on the back of a letter. Normally, Lowery went onto paint the drawings in oil paints.
2. The second one I copied was a sketch Lowery did as a ‘self portrait’. He drew 4 during his life time, showing variations of the theme a ‘pillar shape surrounded by the sea.
Oil Paintings
Lowry composed his paintings in his studio, working from memory, sketches, and imagination. His later paintings had fewer figures in them; some none at all. He also painted some large portrait-like single figures, landscapes, and seascape (painting.about.com).
Lowry is most famous for his paintings of bleak industrial and urban scenes with lots of small figures. With factories and tall chimneys bellowing smoke in the background, and in front of this a pattern of small, thin figures, all busy going somewhere or doing something and being dwarfed by their surroundings. The smallest of his figures were little more than black silhouettes or various muted basic shapes. However, when Lowry came to paint larger figures there was more clear detail of their actual clothes although they were always drab. The skys were typically grey due to smoke pollution or an overcast sky. Shadows were not depicted in his paintings, or the weather. However, Lowry did like to include dogs and horses sometimes hidden behind objects.
Lowry worked in oil paint on canvas and did not use any mediums such as linseed oi. His palette was limited to just five colors: ivory black, prussian blue, vermilion, yellow ocher, and flake white.
In the 1920s, Lowry started applying a layer of flake white before he started painting which came about due to a disagreement with his teacher (Bernard Taylor), who thought Lowry’s pictures were too dark. Taylor was proved right as over the years the flake white in the paintings turned creamy grey-white which pleased Lowry.
The flake white also filled in the the canvas resulting in a rough and textured surface which went well with Lowry’s subject matter. Lowry was also known for painting over his old canvas with new works and also making marks with objects other than a paint brush, for example sticks, opposite end of his paint brush and nails and even his own fingers.
In the Sunderland Museum there were several oil paintings, probably not as well-known as his others,
I made a sketch copy of the ‘Girl’ painting as I was shocked at how basic and child like it was compared to his other paintings of ‘places’. The figure had no real shape, no neck, strange facial features and straggly hair. I don’t think this was his best piece by any means…..possibly the portrait/bigger person painting was not his ‘thing’.
Success did not come to Lowry until later in his life, in the 1964 the then PM, Wilson asked Lowry to paint the official No 10 Christmas card and in 1962 he was elected a Royal Academician at Manchester University.
A few months after his death, on 23 February 1976, a retrospective exhibition of his paintings opened at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
(http://painting.about.com/od/famouspainters/ss/famous-painters-lowry.htm)
Summary
I like Lowry’s paintings as they are unusual. The use of a limited number of colours, not mixing anything in with his oil paints and using different objects to make marks is effective.
As mentioned previously his figures are almost crude like in their portrayal, for example the ‘Girl in Red’ and some of his figures in the ‘Old Chapel’, Newcastle, 1965. However, it cannot be ignored that in some of his paintings they really give the feel of the time, poverty, bleak heavy industrial towns.
The painting below was sold 2011 for £5,641,250 at London auction house Christie’s to an unknown bidder.
The Football Match, a 28ins x 36ins oil painting, was originally bought for just £250 by Cambridgeshire farmer – and future Labour life peer – Harry Walston in 1951.
After his death in 1991, it was sold again at Sotheby’s in London in 1992 for £132,000.
The Football Match
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