Artists
and Architects Associated with Manchester
See
Also: Local
Artists of the Region
L
S Lowry
(1887-1976)
Lawrence
Stephen Lowry was born in Rusholme, Manchester in November 1887,
the only child of Robert Stephen McAll Lowry and Elizabeth Lowry
(née Hobson). He attended a local school in Victoria Park, but
took private lessons from William Fitz, before starting work
as a clerk for a firm of chartered accountants in 1904.
From
1905-1915 he attended drawing and painting classes at the Municipal
College of Art (later Manchester College of Art, and now part
of Manchester Metropolitan University), where he was tutored
by Adolphe Valette. He moved to Pendlebury in Salford with his
parents in 1909, where he was to live for nearly 40 years. During
this time he attended art classes at Salford School of Art,
developing an interest in the urban and industrial landscape.
He
exhibited with the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts from 1919,
as well as entering paintings in the Paris Salon. By the early
1930s he was exhibiting at the Royal Academy in London. He was
awarded an honorary MA at Manchester University in 1945, and
Doctor of Letters in 1961, elected to the Royal Academy in 1962,
and given freedom of the City of Salford in 1965 - many other
honours followed later.
He
is unquestionably the most celebrated of Salford's artists,
and his unique contribution to recording the period culture
and landscape of the city is without parallel. His work is a
most distinctive and comprehensive record of the pre- and post
World War Two northern industrial town.
His
so-called "Matchstick men" became virtually his trademark. He
worked around Manchester, Salford,
Stockport and Mottram,
where he lived for a time. A large collection of his work is
held at the new Lowry Gallery at
Salford Quays .
The Sculpture
of Lowry in Sam's Chop House Restaurant in Manchester city centre
-
one of Lowry's favourite haunts. See Sam's
Chop House.
Sir
Norman Foster
(b. 1935)
Norman Foster was born in Manchester in 1935. He initially trained,
from the age of 21, at the University of Manchester School of
Architecture, and later in 1963, studied at Yale University
in the USA. He went on to work briefly with the great Buckminster
Fuller and then with Richard & Sue Rogers, as well as with his
wife, Wendy Foster, as a member of "Team 4". In 1967 he founded
his own company, Foster Associates, in London.
The
high tech forms of Foster Associates demonstrated an original
and innovative exploration of technology, as well as showing
an overt dedication to quality of detail and craftsmanship.
The company specialised in industrialised modular design which
made extensive use of prefabricated off-site-manufactured elements.
In
1983, Foster was awarded the Royal Institute of British Architects'
Royal Gold Medal and in 1990 the RIBA Trustees Medal was awarded
for Fosters design of the Willis Faber Dumas Head Office building
in Ipswich. He was knighted in 1990, and received the American
Institute of Architects' Gold Medal in 1994.
In June 1999
he received the Pritzer Architecture Prize. He currently has
offices in London, Berlin, and Singapore, with over 500 employees
world-wide.
Other
notable Foster buildings include:
- Sainsbury
Centre - University of East Anglia 1978)
- The Renault
Distribution Centre, Swindon (1983)
- The Hong
Kong and Shanghai Bank Tower (1986)
- ITN Headquarters,
London (1988-90)
- Terminal
for Stanstead Airport (1981-91)
Ford
Madox Brown
Ford Madox
Brown
(1821-1893)
A much travelled
artist, Madox Brown's main connection to the City of Manchester
is his murals in Manchester
Town Hall. Born in Calais, and having studied painting in
Antwerp, Bruges and Ghent, his early work was inspired by masters
like Rembrandt, and others whom he had studied in the Louvre
in Paris.
On
meeting Dante Gabrielle Rossetti in 1848, he became acquainted
with the painters of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, (John Everett
Millais, William Holman Hunt, and others - and developed a style
of realism, detail, light and colour under their influence,
as well as working as a decorator with the William Morris company.
Two
of his most famous paintings, "Work" and "The Last of England"
are to be found in the Manchester
City Art Gallery. Together with Frederick Shields, Madox
Brown was commissioned in 1878 to paint mural decorations for
the Great Hall in the newly built Town Hall. Shields eventually
dropped the project and Madox Brown painted all 12 murals, taking
15 years to complete them.
Madox
Brown preferred to paint from life rather than "invent" objects
- for example, he erected a tent in the Great Hall as a model
for that in the painting of "The Expulsion of the Danes", disrupting
an organ recital in the process. During this time "Work" was
also purchased by Manchester Corporation.
See
also: Madox
Brown's Manchester Town Hall Murals
Adolphe
Valette
(1876-1942)
A French painter born in St Etienne in 1876, who was inspired
by the natural urban landscape of Manchester and produced some
of his finest paintings in the region. Having been trained in
France during the height of the Impressionist movement, continued
his studies in London and with scholarships to study in Japan,
he moved to Manchester in 1905 to work for a printing company,
designing greetings cards and calendars.
After
joining evening classes at the Municipal School of Art, he was
invited in 1907 to join the staff as a teacher. He employed
a distinctive French style of teaching, sitting and painting
with his students - a style which was unknown in Britain at
that time. His style evidently found the approval of his students,
as his most notable protégé, L.S. Lowry felt that he had brought
with him "a much needed injection of vitality from the colourful
art world of France".
Lowry
admired and learned a great deal from Valette, who had introduced
him to the possibility of painting the urban landscape. Ill
health, caused him to resign from his post in 1920, and after
a few years teaching and painting in Manchester and Bolton
he returned to France, where he died in 1942.
His
style was distinctively Impressionist, and this mixed with the
damp foggy atmosphere of contemporary Manchester enabled him
to produce some of his best known paintings.
Alfred
Waterhouse
(1830-1905)
A renowned
English architect, who was responsible for many of Manchester's
great civic buildings, including Manchester
Town Hall. Waterhouse was born in Liverpool and was educated
at the Grove School in Tottenham, London. As a young architect
he spent many of his early years travelling in Europe and studying
in France, Italy and Germany.
Later
he set up an architectural practice in Manchester, where he
worked for twelve years before moving to London. During his
time at Manchester, he was in great demand for the many new
public buildings that the Manchester authorities commissioned
- The Refuge Assurances Building in Oxford Street, (now the
Palace Hotel), The National Provincial
Bank, the original Owens Park building, (now the University
of Manchester), and Strangeways
Prison.
But
of all these, his most notable was certainly the new Manchester
Town Hall. The triangular site called for original and innovative
thinking, and Waterhouse's skilful design overcame all difficulties,
(against celebrated competition), resulting in a striking Victorian
neo-Gothic which was admired by the general public as well as
his contemporary architects.
He
also produced many fine buildings for the City of Liverpool,
and designed the Natural History Museum in South Kensington.
Waterhouse is best known for his public buildings, but he also
produced many smaller domestic buildings as well as his own
house in Fallowfield (now gone).
Amongst
the many honours he received was his presidency of the Royal
Institute of British Architects from 1888-1891 - a post which
both his son, Paul and grandson, Michael held after him.
|
