Lowry, L(aurence) S(tephen) 1887-1976
English painter

Born in Manchester, he worked as a clerk until 1952, but trained at Manchester College of Art in the evenings (1905-15). From 1915 to 1925 he attended Salford School of Art, and from 1918 the life class at Manchester Academy of Fine Arts. He produced numerous pictures of the Lancashire industrial scene, mainly in brilliant whites and greys, often filled with uncommunicative matchstick antlike men and women, in a deliberately na�ve style. He lived at home nursing his mother until her death in 1939. Their claustrophobic relationship is the subject of a ballet. His work is represented in many major collections (Tate, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York, etc) and in the Lowry Gallery in Salford, and a Lowry Centre is to be built in the docklands area of Manchester (1997- ).