L.S. Lowry (1887-1976) will forever be associated with the "industrial cityscapes" he painted of his native Lancashire, said William Cook in The Critic. The artist spent most of his life in Pendlebury in Greater Manchester, where he was born, raised, worked as a rent collector – and produced his depictions of "dark satanic mills and smoking chimney stacks". But from the 1930s until his death, he spent his summer holidays in Berwick-upon-Tweed, an "unfashionable seaside town" far removed from the "bright lights" of resorts such as Blackpool. Here, "far from the stress and bustle of his daily life", he made a number of "enigmatic" seaside paintings that, unlike his urban scenes, were mostly "bereft of human life".
This exhibition features more than 20 paintings, pastels and drawings; it explores Lowry's connections to Berwick and his little-understood seascapes, revealing "an entirely different side" to his work. It's an "intriguing" show that tells us much about "the inner life of this introverted artist".
His "love of the sea" went back to family holidays on the Lancashire coast and days out with his mother to Lytham St Annes, said Laura Gascoigne in The Spectator: an early painting, "Yachts at Lytham" (which isn't in this show), was apparently the only picture for which his mother, who disapproved of her son's industrial scenes, "ever expressed admiration". This show begins on a jolly note: in "July, the Seaside" (1943), "the familiar painter of matchstick men is at work, observing families at play like a traveller from another planet", capturing "a compendium of beach activities – swings, sandcastles, puppet shows, donkey rides" with a deadpan comedy.
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