Laurence Stephen Lowry was born in Manchester in 1887, and moved to Salford in 1909. He is often referred to as ‘The Matchstick Man’, after the style of many of his paintings, which depict matchstick-like people going about their daily work and play.
Lowry evidently visited Berwick many times from the mid-1930s until the summer before he died, in 1976. The artist owned a rare guide to the town, A Guide to Berwick-upon-Tweed, written by Alex Steven and published around 1938. Normally staying at the Castle Hotel, Lowry once thought about buying a house on the Elizabethan walls. Berwick’s Lowry Trail, along those same walls, identifies the sites of some of the artist’s finest paintings and drawings of the town.
Town Hall
Lowry’s oil on canvas painting of the Town Hall, in 1935, depicts the Georgian building as taller than the real thing, with it dominating the sky line. Using artistic license, he added colourful buildings with large chimneys on either side of the hall. Building of the Town Hall was completed in 1761, and it was used for the town’s administration, as well as a court house, gaol, butter market and dancing assemblies.
The Lions
The house known as The Lions, along the trail on the Elizabethan walls, dates from 1807. Lowry was intrigued by the two lions on the gates and was thought to have considered buying the house in 1947. He did not proceed with it, however, when an architect friend warned him it was full of dampness. By 1971, The Lions was derelict, as depicted in Lowry’s painting. It was threatened with demolition in 1976, but was saved by The Berwick-upon-Tweed Preservation Trust, and it was eventually restored by a consortium of local businessmen.
Football Match
Lowry’s Football Match is an undated drawing in pencil and pen, showing a game of football taking place on ‘The Stanks’, or ditch. The football ground is on top of the former Elizabethan moat. The goal area is situated below one of the eight defensive points on the walls, which protected the town against threatened attack from the Scots in previous centuries.
An Old Street in Berwick-upon-Tweed
Lowry’s oil painting of An Old Street in Berwick-upon-Tweed, in 1952, shows his signature matchstick figures of a few people walking in the narrow street, with houses close on either side. The painting was sold for £5250 in 1952, but came up for auction again in May 2010, when it was expected to attract more than seventy times that figure. Another of his paintings, A Market Place, Berwick-upon-Tweed, sold for more than £500,000 at Christie’s in 2009.
L. S. Lowry produced between 2000 and 3000 paintings or drawings, until his death in 1976, and he remains an increasingly popular British artist. Some of his finest work was produced in Berwick-upon-Tweed.
Sources:
Mervyn Levy, The Paintings of L.S. Lowry: Oils and Watercolours, Jupiter Books: London, 1975
Berwick-upon-Tweed Lowry Trail Information Plaques
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