L.S. LOWRY, GOING TO THE MATCH, SIGNED OFFSET LITHOGRAPH PRINTED IN COLOURS, EDITION OF 300, 1972
As an ardent admirer and player of sport, particularly football and cricket, it is one of the most significant reoccurring subject matters throughout Lowry’s oeuvre. In his early years, he was a frequent visitor to The Bolton Wanderers football club located in Burnden Park just outside of Pendlebury, which is the scenery he references directly in Going to The Match. Albeit his style being realistic and the subject itself autobiographical in this piece, Lowry also incorporates imaginary elements and various symbols from his unique vocabulary into the landscape, making it part-real part-fragment of his own vision. He referred to these as dreamscapes.
Going to the Match highlights Lowry’s exceptional skill in representing the movement of a crowd, of a collective of peoples – as Sir Ian McKellen, one the artist’s most prominent collectors, points out:
“Each individual is on his/her own journey across the canvas yet leaning to form the crowd with its own collective identity. (…) Going about our business or pleasure, we are all subjects of his vision.”
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ABOUT L.S. LOWRY
L.S. Lowry is a much-loved British painter known for pictures that capture urban life in industrial north west England, most notably during the 1920s. Born in 1887 in Stretford, Lancashire, Laurence Stephen Lowry later moved to Pendlebury near Manchester where he lived and worked for over 40 years. The area, which he at first detested, was covered in factories and cotton mills that Lowry would soon obsessively depict. His fascination with the industrial landscapes and the people that inhabited them was inspired by a missed train. Standing on the platform at Pendlebury station, Lowry would later write of the view of the Acme Spinning Company’s mill, saying “I watched this scene – which I’d look at many times without seeing – with rapture.”
