How He Has Been Misunderstood

The romantic origin story of how Lowry became an artist is that, one day in 1916, he missed his train. He told John Read, the maker of the BBC film, about how having found himself at a loose end in a Manchester suburb, he happened upon some streets of terraced houses at the foot of an immense mill. As he took in the scene, he was filled with the urge to paint it, and at that moment he decided to become an artist. When it emerged after his death that he had held down a day job for years, it led some critics to dismiss him as a so-called "Sunday painter". The truth is that he had studied painting and drawing for at least 20 years, taking classes at the Manchester Municipal and Salford Schools of Art.

Just as some of Picasso's work may look crude to the untutored eye, Lowry's pictures could seem naïve, but both artists had to first master the traditional rules before finding new ways to break them. Lowry bristled at being thought of as an amateur artist. One of his biggest inspirations was the painter Adolphe Valette, who turned up in Manchester in 1906 to teach art and introduce French Impressionism to the city. Valette's paintings of modern industrial life had an important influence on Lowry's subject matter and early style. While Lowry was a talented painter of landscapes, he produced fewer of them as time went on. Perhaps he felt that what he witnessed as a rent collector was more urgent and compelling.

Although Lowry is identified with Lancashire's industrial landscapes, his scenes were mostly drawn from his imagination rather than real life. "I start on an empty canvas and prefer to paint from my mind's eye," he said. The blank page held no terror for him. While he would have no preconceived notion of what to paint, he would begin by painting the buildings and the rest would suggest itself. "It sometimes comes very well and sometimes for no apparent reason, not at all well, but it could take a couple of years to paint a picture quite easily from start to finish. Of course, they're intricate pictures and they're full of figures and detail – it all takes balancing, which is not easy to do."

"I'm a simple man," Lowry once said, "and I use simple materials: ivory black, vermilion, Prussian blue, yellow ochre, flake white, and mix them with no medium – that's all I ever use for my painting." Lowry did not believe in sitting around and waiting for inspiration to strike. In the 1957 short film, he said that painting was a habit, whether he was in the mood or not. He did not want his creativity to be clouded by overthinking. "I find that when I'm very anxious to do a thing well, I don't do it at all well, and when I don't seem to mind very much at all and nothing matters about it, it comes out all right," he said.

He would continue working steadily on the painting until he was satisfied he could do nothing more with it. He refused to be bound by precise notions of central composition and perspective, often stretching or compressing his buildings to heighten the bustle of his matchstick crowds. "After all, it's only a picture – it's all make-believe, it's not reality," he said.

The BBC's short film adopted what has since become a familiar approach, blending Lowry's own voiceover with scenes of him at work. The footage was shot in Lowry's clock‑filled house in a leafy village near Manchester where he lived alone. Producer John Read later recalled: "In spite of his awkward figure, he had the dignity and the bearing of a gentleman. But when I saw him sitting in this room, staring into the fire… I sensed an enormous inner desolation in the man." An eternal observer of life, Lowry's work captured the melancholy of large crowds. "I'm bound to reflect myself in the figures – I'm a very lonely sort of person," he told the BBC.

- Author: Greg McKevitt, BBC