12 November 2012

L. S. Lowry and Harry Rutherford in Tameside



The bronze statue of the painter L. S. Lowry, installed in 2005 at Jollys Corner at the junction of Hyde Road and Stalybridge Road, Mottram in Longdendale, Tameside.

At the side is a pictorial map of Mottram.

One of the pictures is a Lowryesque representation of Lowry's former house round the corner at 23 Stalybridge Road.


'LAWRENCE STEPHEN LOWRY 1887–1976
The famous North Country artist L. S. Lowry
lived here from 1948 until his death in 1976.
The paintings of Lowry document the lives
of ordinary people in the industrial
communities of the North West.'

And the house itself. Lowry was buried in his parents' grave in Southern Cemetery, Chorlton, which has been made famous of course through The Smiths' song 'Cemetry Gates' [sic], although when I went there I didn't realize Lowry was buried there.

Lowry's house was named 'The Elms', and the inscription is just about legible on either side of the door here.

And just three miles to the west of the Lowry statue, at the side of the entrance to Hyde Town Hall, is a slightly ambiguous plaque dedicated to another 'Northern School' painter.

'HARRY RUTHERFORD 1903–1985
The artist Harry Rutherford lived here, keeping
a studio next door. Rutherford liked to paint
popular entertainments – music halls, theatres,
pubs, the circus and the cinema and sketched
for his own television programmes
in the 1930s and 1950s'

'This blue plaque to Harry Rutherford is a replica.
The original may be seen at his former home at
17 Nelson Street, Hyde.

The plaque was unveiled on 20th November 1993
by Sir George Kenyon, DL, BSc, LLD,
a close friend of the artist.'

And here is the plaque at Nelson Street, shadowed by scaffolding from the house next door to it.


A previous blog post I made about Lowry's work is linked below.

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L. S. Lowry in Nottingham, England

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