Going to the Match is an oil on canvas painting by L.S. Lowry. The painting depicts a crowd of people, drawn in Lowry's distinctive "matchstick" style, walking towards Burnden Park, a football ground in Bolton. It has been described as "perhaps the most famous football painting".[1]
Description edit
The painting depicts a crowd of people walking towards Burnden Park, then the home ground of football club Bolton Wanderers. It contains a number of themes common in Lowry's works. Against a grey industrial backdrop, a huddled mass of people drawn in matchstick style lean forward in the direction of their common goal. A number of dogs are visible in the foreground.[2]
Mervyn Levy described the painting as "Manchester Impressionism at its most subtle".[2]
History edit
Lowry's home in Pendlebury was approximately seven miles from the Burnden area of Bolton, and he regularly watched matches at Burnden Park.[2] The 1953 painting was not Lowry's first of Burnden Park; he created a similar work in 1946. However, the 1946 version measured 11cm by 9cm, in comparison to the 1953 version's 70cm by 90cm.[3] The painting was Lowry's entry into a football art competition organised by The Football Association in honour of the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, for which it won first prize.[4] The following year the painting formed part of an Arts Council exhibition entitled "Football and the Fine Arts".[1]
The painting set a record auction price for a 20th century British work when it was sold at the London auction house Sotheby's in 1999. The buyer, the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA), paid £1,926,500, far in excess of the pre-auction estimate of £500,000.[5] The previous record for a 20th Century British painting was £1.2 million, for Stanley Spencer's Crucifixion in 1990;[5] the record for a Lowry had been held by Piccadilly Circus (1959), sold for £562,000 in 1998.[6] The record for a Lowry work was subsequently surpassed in 2007 by the sale of his 1946 painting Good Friday, Daisy Nook for £3,772,000.[7]
Following the purchase by the PFA, the painting was loaned to first Salford Art Gallery, then The Lowry museum, also in Salford.[8] The former was the first time the work had been displayed in public since an exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1976.[8] The painting has been on display at the National Football Museum in Manchester since July 2012, when the museum relocated to Manchester from Preston.[9]
References edit
- ^ a b "Bookmarks". When Saturday Comes. November 2005. Retrieved 2 June 2013.
- ^ a b c "Matchstick fans to fetch a fortune". Lancashire County Publications. 7 May 1999.
- ^ "Lowry's Burnden painting could fetch more than £500,000". Lancashire County Publications. 13 October 1999.
- ^ Fiachra Gibbons (2 December 1999). "Lowry football painting comes home for £2m". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 June 2013.
- ^ a b "Footballers' union nets Lowry". BBC News. 1 December 1999. Retrieved 2 June 2013.
- ^ John Stevens (17 November 2011). "Lowry's Piccadilly Circus equals artist's £5.6m record at major auction of his work". Daily Mail. Retrieved 2 June 2013.
- ^ "Lowry work fetches record £3.8m". BBC News. 8 June 2007. Retrieved 2 June 2013.
- ^ a b Clare Garner (2 December 1999). "Footballers' union buys Lowry painting for less than the cost of a promising wing-back". BBC News. Retrieved 2 June 2013.
- ^ "National Football Museum scores on every level". The Bolton News. 5 July 2012. Retrieved 2 June 2013.