rejuvenating

My nan had one in her downstairs loo. An LS Lowry print, that is. It showed a street scene: 100-odd people, a few dogs, some mills in the background. I remember liking the work mostly because I could see myself in it, in a way that I couldn’t when faced with paintings of fruit or water lilies. I’ve had a soft spot for the painter ever since, and to mark the 50th anniversary of his passing, I travelled up to Manchester for a Lowry-themed break.

My first stop was the Manchester Art Gallery on Mosley Street, where a number of his works hang alongside those of his mentor, the French impressionist Pierre Adolphe Valette (Lowry took evening classes with Valette while working as a rent collector).

Each of the paintings on show, whether of a street or park or lonely road, hints at a shared experience. They are more than the sum of their parts, more than mere matchsticks. Detractors bemoan Lowry’s lack of technique, but for me that’s rather like dismissing Gavin & Stacey for not containing enough big words.

With the rain falling heavily, I found refuge in Sam’s Chop House, down an alley off Cross Street. The pub-restaurant has been going since 1868, and was a bolthole for Lowry, who sits still at the bar, set in bronze. I leant on the man as I saw off a pint, then made a fool of myself by trying to get a selfie with the pair of us in it. Lowry was too large for the frame.

I crossed the River Irwell and entered Salford, which has a unique identity and is a city in its own right – not just Manchester’s bit on the side, as is routinely reported.

Alongside the Irwell, just a few yards into Salford, stands The Lowry hotel, which was initially owned by Sir Rocco Forte, whose hotelier father was a Lowry enthusiast. In the hotel’s gym, I realised that the music of the Smiths isn’t conducive to a workout. But on the treadmill I caught a Morrissey lyric about it taking “strength to be gentle”, and it made me think of Lowry, a man brave enough to stick to his everyday scenes at a time arty types in London were calling for more elevated fare.

I was collected from the hotel by John Consterdine, a local legend who does tours of the region in an electric black cab, including one focused on Lowry. We started at Lowry’s endpoint, Southern Cemetery, where the painter has lain since perishing of pneumonia in 1976, at the age of 88. His resting place is marked by a modest stone cross and adorned with paintbrushes. It is shared, fittingly, with his overbearing mother.

Next, we drove out to a part of town known as Victoria Park. Once a gated community for middle-class Victorians, it’s where Lowry grew up. The house at 14 Pine Grove offers no hint that he lived here until the age of 22, at which point the family were forced to move to Pendlebury, a deprived district of Salford. The relocation was a fall from grace, one that Lowry’s mother would never recover from.

Lowry did adapt to his new surroundings, however. Indeed, it was here that he discovered his unlikely muse – Manchester’s industrial landscape – and went to work on the down-to-earth scenes that he would become known for. Again, the house (117 Station Road) is unmarked. I’m tempted to consider this regrettable, but it’s probably what Lowry would have wanted. The artist refused a knighthood in 1968, and holds the record for most honours declined, turning down five in his lifetime.

After a brief stop at Peel Park, which Lowry painted several times, John dropped me at Salford Quays, which would have been as busy as a box of frogs back in the day, before the bottom fell out of the cotton market. Salford was affected badly by the slump and the city entered a long, deep depression, soundtracked by Joy Division. The docks were a wasteland, renewal a pipe dream.

Enter Lowry. Or rather, the Lowry: a theatre and gallery complex, conceived by Salford councillors in the late 1980s, who hoped an arts centre would rejuvenate the area. It opened in 2000 and set off a chain reaction. London’s Imperial War Museum erected a northern outpost; then the BBC moved to MediaCityUK and told Gary Lineker he’d be dipping his prawns in gravy henceforth. By the time ITV and Corrie moved in, in 2013, Salford Quays was becoming a tourist, retail, residential and leisure hub.

At the heart of it was the Lowry, whose halls had been decked with the vast collection of Lowry paintings the local council had been snapping up over the years.

I started with a new immersive experience called Lowry 360. I entered a space the size of a squash court, each side and surface alive with Lowry’s artwork – bobbies on the beat, bicycles on the move, matchsticks a go-go – the whole thing elevated by a voiceover from Sophie Willan, star of the sitcom Alma’s Not Normal. By animating Lowry in this way, the paintings grow to their subjects’ true height, becoming entire worlds. This is Lowry in the round, and it works like a dream.

I moved on to the paintings, which felt more alive off the back of the animation. Centre stage is Going to the Match (1953), one of his most famous works featuring signature “matchstick men”, which shows a crowd on their way to a Bolton Wanderers game.

The painting has been on quite the journey. When the Lowry opened, it was offered to the gallery on long-term loan by its then owners, the Professional Footballers’ Association. Twenty years later, the PFA suddenly asked for the painting back, because it wanted to flog it at auction. The Lowry was gutted, knowing its prized possession would be lost for good.

Enter Andrew Law, a state school lad from Stockport and the sitting CEO of a global hedge fund. He wrote the Lowry a blank cheque and told it to acquire the painting. It did so – for £7.8m. Someone buy that man a shandy!

I could bang on about each of the paintings on show at the Lowry, but suffice to say that the whole range is here: mills, streets, churches, parks, a girl in a corset and the deep blue sea. Despite the received wisdom, Lowry is no one-trick pony. When you’ve seen one, you haven’t seen them all.

It was time to go to the match. Manchester United were at home to Bournemouth that evening, so off I went to the “Theatre of Dreams”. I took up a position behind the East Stand, part of a thickening congregation as kick-off approached: kids on shoulders, a lady hawking scarves, coppers policing Matt Busby Way.

Not having a ticket, I withdrew to Hotel Football, within earshot of the ground. After the game I climbed to the top and looked towards the skyline of Salford and Manchester.

It was some view: the skyscrapers of New Jackson, the bright cluster of MediaCity, the dark lifted by countless northern lights. There wasn’t a chimney in sight, but I fancy Lowry would have captured the scene nicely nonetheless. He might have added a figure or two – a pair of window cleaners perhaps, harnessed and up high, braving the weather, buffing the glass, improving perspective, allowing others to see.

The trip was supported by The Lowry hotel, which has doubles from £162, room-only. Visit manchestertaxitours.co.uk to enquire about John Consterdine’s tours. Manchester Art Gallery and the Lowry have free entry