THE FOOTBALL MATCH. THE BEAUTIFUL GAME, LOWRY STYLE
LS Lowry, The Football Match, 1973, signed and numbered in pencil, offset lithograph, image size: 25 x 36cm, framed size: 46 x 56 cm, edition of 850. Image courtesy of Hidden Gallery, 2023LS Lowry was an ardent Manchester City fan, but he also had a soft spot for Bolton Wanderers.
He painted scores of football-related paintings, but was generally more interested in the fans, than the players. His paintings weren’t about the centre-forward thwacking the ball past the despairing dive of the keeper: they were about the common purpose of the crowd, as thousands of working-class men (and the odd woman) made their way to the ground on a Saturday afternoon. Heads down; flat caps; chunky boots: typical Lowry fare.
He was in those crowds himself, making a fortnightly pilgrimage from his home in Pendleton to the Maine Road stadium in Moss Side, the other side of the city centre. Formulating mental notes, no doubt, to take back with him to the studio. And sketching, on whatever material came to hand.
The most famous Lowry football painting – 1953’s Going to the Ground, recently (in October 2022) fetched £7.8 million, at a Christie’s Auction, bought by the Lowry arts centre, having been put up for sale by the Professional Football Association.
The 1932 oil painting The Football Match goes against the grain of his usual subject matter, in that the focus is on the match itself: you can even see the ball. This clearly isn’t a professional game, as the fans number in their scores rather than their thousands, and the players are clustered round the ball, playground-style, rather than set out in organised tactical formations (Gary Lineker would be appalled). In the background a mixture of elegance and industry, as church spires and towers vie for attention with chimneys and gas holders.
In 1973 Lowry ordered a series of 850 lithographs to be printed of a preparatory pencil sketch he’d made for the painting, each one hand-signed in the bottom right-hand corner. That must have been quite a job, but it is paying dividends for those who have since bought them. Lowry prints have gone up in value exponentially in recent years. A print of The Football Match (number 568 in the series) is currently on sale at Hidden’s London gallery, for £11,500.