Lowry, L(aurence) S(tephen)

English painter. His works depict life in the industrial towns of the north of England. In the 1920s he developed a naive style characterized by matchstick figures, often in animated groups, and gaunt simplified factories and terraced houses, painted in an almost monochrome palette. The Pond (1950; Tate Gallery, London) is an example. The Lowry Arts Centre in Salford, near Manchester, England, opened in 2000 with exhibits of almost 100 Lowry works.

He also painted remote seascapes, lonely hill landscapes and some striking portraits, for example A Manchester Man (1936).

Born in Manchester, where he studied at the Art College, he spent the rest of his life in nearby Salford, earning his living as a rent collector. He concentrated entirely on the life around him, his paintings sometimes inspired by a humorous anecdote, as in The Arrest (1927; Castle Museum, Nottingham).

Although he was a legend in his lifetime, he remained an elusive, retiring figure, rarely venturing beyond his native towns.