Customer Reviews (2)

The beauty of stoic immobility `
I owe my acquaintance with the work of Lowry to the Jerusalem artist Rifkah Goldberg who is a great admirer of his work. This volume contains beautiful color reproductions of Lowry's work, and its seems to me a highly perceptive description and interpretation of the artist's work by Michael Howard.
When I first saw the matchstick like figures of some Lowry's cityscenes I was instantly charmed by it. At the same time it seemed to me to present a childlike primitive even Grandma Moses - like way of seeing things.
But later through looking a lot at the work of Rifkah Goldberg ,whose figures have the same kind of stoic immobility that Lowry's do, I began to sense a kind of strange beauty in the work.. It isthe Manchester world of many machine- made or machine- like figures each somehow set off by itself completely alone and isolated , barely able to move and certainly unable to communicate.
In one 'family picture' in this work there is a father and two sons . Howard points out that Lowry did not have a wife and children of his own. And that the family presented in the picture is a totally dysfunctional one with each of the people wholly isolated.
Lowry painted the sea and smokestacks of the city and the sticklike figures of a matchbox world. Still it feels upon the looking and re- looking at it as if it is a singular way of seeing things, the brilliant gift of a lone and lonely individual to enhance however difficultly Mankind's picture of the world.

A beautiful book about a great artist
Perhaps the most famous 'outsider artist' L. S. Lowry is honored in thisbook.The reproductions of his throngs, smokestacks, and seascapes aremany and beautiful, and the text is full of Lowry's witty quotes.A bitpricey, due to the independant press and high quality, but this is the onlysource I know of with this much of Lowry's work, and all in color.Pleasebuy me one. ... Read more

Product Description
A paperback edition of this study of the painter L.S. Lowry, which provides an account of his career and includes excerpts from a rare interview given to Edwin Mullins and a discussion by Marina Vaizey of his place in the history of art. Originally published in 1987. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

L.S Lowry a fascinating insight.
L.S Lowry by Michael Leber & Judith Sadling is a fantastic book on the artist. Its 144 pages are full of interesting detail, giving a full insight to the life of Lowry. Plus there are interviews with Lowry by Edwin Mullinsa former critic of the Sunday Telegraph.The book is packed full ofpictures of Lowrys work, some in colour, postcard and A4 size. Plus acatalogue of works in public collections, giving title, date, size, andtype of painting(oil, pencil etc), over 440 listed works, most with a blackand white picture. For the Lowry beginner to the specialist this book is amust. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The life and work of Lowry
This is considered the most complete and authoritative biography of the artist L.S. Lowry. It tells the story of a life of dedication to Art , and of a personal isolation mitigated by friendship. Lowry's great revelatory moment was when his parents and he were forced to move from one side of Manchester, the wealthy, to the other, the world of the mills. It would be the mills, the world of urban hardship and poverty which inspired his most well- known work. And his pictures of the industrial landscape filled with figures of sticklike isolated human beings would become his most well- known work. Later he would change his subject, devote himself more to portraits which were most powerful when they revealed a kind of oddness and sadness of soul in their subjects. That oddness and sadness too characterized in some way Lowry himself.
Emotionally his story is of prolonged and close ties to his parents, especially his mother. A petulant dissatisfied woman she nonetheless held him emotionally. He with care nursed her for the last seven years of her life when she was unable to move. And he said after she died that the meaning and purpose had gone out of his life. And in some way he did feel this throughout though in the last thirty some odd years of his life his work was increasingly recognized and appreciated.
Lowry lived a ' double- life' as artist and rent- collector, something which he did much to hide. He was known as a good friend and especially generous to young artists after he himself became successful.
This work is an exhaustively researched one.
I might add, that it focuses on the life. And while there are a number of outstanding passages describing the work , and much background information which will certainly help any student of the work understand it better, the heart of this work is a very careful and skilled telling of Lowry's life- story. ... Read more

Product Description
Lowry, an essentially private man who worked full time as a rent collector from the age of fifteen until retirement, drew upon his experiences of the landscape and people of the industrial north as subjects for his painting and drawing. He is best known for his mill scenes and matchstick men, and many of his industrial scenes are included in this selection. Also included are less familiar works - portraits, self-portraits, seascapes, the 'empty' landscapes, drawing of cripples and social outcasts and several later drawings. The author has made his selection from the whole range of Lowry's output and written a commentary which attempts to enlarge understanding of this extraordinary and dedicated artist. ... Read more