Lowry Google Doodle

On November 1^st 2012, the Google doodle team celebrated what would have been the 125th birthday of the British artist L.S. Lowry with a dedicated Lowry Google Doodle which replaced the search engine’s logo for the day. The Lowry Google Doodle only appeared on the search engine’s homepage in the United Kingdom. The Lowry Google Doodle was an illustrated industrial landscape in the style which the artist was famous for. In addition, the Lowry Google Doodle also featured people depicted in Lowry’s trademark “matchstick” style. The Google logo was depicted in the Lowry Google Doodle with six buildings in different shapes. Each of these buildings were coloured in the same colour of the letter it represented in the Lowry Google Doodle. To demonstrate, the building which represented the second “O” of the logo was yellow in the Lowry Google Doodle.

Lowry was born Lawrence Stephen Lowry on November 1^st 1887 in the Lancastrian town of Stretford. He was born in his family home 8 Barrett Street, Old Trafford. The birth was difficult, initially his mother had hoped for a daughter and as a result is said to have struggled to have looked at the infant Lowry during the first months of his life. The aspirations of Lowry’s mother for a daughter are said to have continued after the birth, these aspirations resulted in an envy for her sister, who had given birth to “three splendid daughters”, instead of her “one clumsy boy”. Lowry’s father, Robert Lowry, worked as a clerk for the Jacob Earnshaw and Son Property Company. Robert was a deeply introverted man who Lowry later described as a “cold fish”, who was the kind of human who “realised he had a life to live and did his best to get through it”.

In later life, Lowry claimed that he had an unhappy childhood as a result of a repressive family atmosphere and his mother’s inability to recognise his talents. For much of his childhood Lowry lived in the Mancunian suburb of Rusholme, until financial restrictions forced the family to move to Pendlebury.

Lowry’s school performance was unremarkable. Upon leaving school he took a position at the Pall Mall Company. In the evenings after work Lowry took art lessons, where he was taught both antique and landscape drawing. As a result of these lessons, Lowry secured a position at the Manchester School of Art in 1905. Whilst here he studied under Pierre Adolphe Vallete, who was a French Impressionist artist.

Following his studies at the Manchester School of Art, he gained a position at the Salford Royal Technical College, in 1915. Lowry studied here until 1925, whilst here he began to develop his trademark style and became interested in the industrial landscapes which were to define his later career.

In 1932 his father died leaving a number of large and unpaid debts. Following his father’s death, his mother’s mental health deteriorated, she had a history of neurosis and depression, to the extent that she was largely bedridden and dependent on the care which Lowry provided. However, Lowry still found time to conduct his painting. Typically he would draw and paint once his mother had gone to sleep, between the hours of 10:00pm and 2:00am. During this period of his artistic life, Lowry produced a series of self-portraits, which have been later named “the horrible heads” series.

The death of his mother during October of 1929, left Lowry feeling depressed to the extent that he began to neglect the maintenance of his lodgings and as a result his landlord repossessed the property in 1948. However, at this time Lowry had plenty of money and was easily able to afford a property, “The Elms”, in Mottram.

During the years of the Second World War, Lowry put himself forward for service as a volunteer fire watcher. But, due to his artistic talents he was promoted in 1943 to an official war artist. Throughout his adult life he was a highly eccentric individual and was reported to have a number of clocks in the living room of The Elms, each of which was set to a slightly different time. He gave two reasons for this, the first and more eccentric was that he simply did not want to know what the real time was. The second, more rational, reason was that he did not want to be deafened by the sound of all of the chimes sounding simultaneously.

During the 1950’s, as a result of his artistic talent and success, Lowry gained celebrity status. He is reported to have found this tiresome and became increasingly weary of strangers approaching him in public. His celebrity status was such that fans of his work visited him at his home. His solution to this problem was to place a suitcase by the door, so he could claim to be on his way out in order to avoid the interaction. However, this practice ended when a visitor said he would carry the artist’s suitcase to the train station for him.

Lowry never married and claimed in his final years, at the age of 88, that he had “never had a woman”. He took pleasure from watching football matches and supported Manchester City. Despite his artistic success, Lowry continued to work for the Pall Mall Company. The company was extremely supportive of his artistic development and gave him additional time off in order to host exhibitions. He retired from his position of cashier in 1952, on his 65^th birthday. He kept his job a closely guarded secret in both his artistic and social life, commentators have suggested he felt ashamed of it and that it would prevent him from being seen as a serious artist.

As the result of over 60 years of intense productivity, Lowry produced an exceptional amount of paintings and drawings. His artwork commonly sells for prices in excess of one million pounds. The greatest collection of his artwork is contained at a gallery named after him in Manchester. The Lowry houses 55 of his paintings and 278 of his drawings, of which up to 100 are displayed to visitors.

Lowry died at the age of 88, on February 23^rd 1976, from pneumonia. His estate was valued at £298,459 and contained a large number of his works, in addition to some created by other artists. This is not the first time the Google doodle team have celebrated the life of a great artist in their own artistic style with creating the Lowry Google Doodle. Other famous artists to have received dedicated Google doodles include, Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh and Rembrandt van Rijn.