Lowry painting could fetch £1m at auction this week

The Herald Scotland

28-04-2025

It's being offered by Lyon & Turnbull, Scotland's oldest and largest fine art auctioneers, this Friday as part of its two-day Modern Made sale in London.
Lowry studied painting and drawing in the evenings at the Municipal College of Art in Manchester (1905-15) and at Salford School of Art (1915-1925) while working as a rent collector during the day.
He painted Going to the Mill in 1925, but it wasn't until his one-man exhibition nearly 15 years later in 1939 that he achieved widespread fame for his portrayal of everyday industrial scenes in and around Manchester peopled by his distinctive figures.
According to Simon Hucker, Senior Specialist in Modern and Contemporary Art with the UK-wide auction house, Going to the Mill depicts a very early iteration of Lowry's classic subject matter.
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It was originally acquired directly from Lowry by the Manchester Guardian's literary editor, A.S. (Arthur) Wallace, who used three of Lowry's works to illustrate a special supplement to mark Manchester Civic Week in October 1925.
During Civic Week, Lowry's works were displayed in Lewis' department store in the city, where they were mostly passed by – despite the favourable reviews The Guardian had given his work when it was first exhibited in Manchester in 1921.
Wallace was taken by Lowry's work, striking up a friendship with the artist and asking to buy one. Going to the Mill is marked on the back as being £30, but Lowry let Wallace have it for £10. The artist also threw in an additional work, The Manufacturing Town, which the family sold several years ago.
Mr Hucker explained: "Civic Week was held by Manchester City Council ostensibly to celebrate the city's industrial success, but also with an ulterior motive to discourage the city's disgruntled workers from going on strike.
"It was the grim nature of workers' lives that interested Lowry but this also made it hard for him to find an audience for his work."
A.J. Wallace approached Lowry directly about selling Going to the Mill to him. The painting features the classic Lowry view of a mill and chimney behind, a domed roof and a wall of windows – all foregrounded by scurrying 'matchstick' millworkers.
Unlike his later works, there is a sootiness to his palette. Later, he would stage his visions of industrial scenes of the city against isolating backgrounds of plain flake-white paint.
Speaking to The Guardian on behalf of the family, his grandson Keith Wallace, explained: "Lowry said with great daring: 'Could we say £10?' and Grandpa wrote a cheque. Then Lowry wrote back to him saying: 'I think I've charged you too much. Can I give you another one as well?' So Grandpa got two Lowrys for his £10."
The Wallace family still have Lowry's letter of 9 November 1926, in which the artist writes:
"Many thanks for your letter and cheque for £10. I am very glad Mrs Wallace likes the picture Going to Work and take the liberty of asking you to please accept The Manufacturing Town as a souvenir of the Civic Week. I can assure you that it will always be with great pleasure that I shall think of that Saturday morning."
The journalist and the painter remained in touch and, in later years, Arthur's retirement book from The Guardian included a letter from Lowry saying 'so sorry to hear you're retiring through ill health."
Mr Hucker added: "The Manufacturing Town was sold by the Wallace family – with Lowry's blessing, as he understood that a new generation of the family needed help getting set up – and is now in the collection of the Science Museum in London.
"Going to the Mill was kept – recently being on long-term loan to Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, and only comes to market now as a further generation finds themselves in need of a leg up.
"This is a painting which shows us that Lowry is no naif painter of 'matchstick men and matchstick cats and dogs', as the hit song by Brian and Michael in 1977 put it.
"It is the work of an artist of true dexterity who is making a deliberate formal choice, abstracting the figure, in order to express a concept, the sense of a life lived in even the smallest, most incidental figure.
"Going to the Mill is the epitome of a 1920s Lowry, when he truly becomes a unique voice. It is especially rare is for a painting such as this to have had only one owner. A work of similar size and date sold from HSBC's collection last year went for £1.2m. We are very proud to present this painting to the market for the first time since it was sold directly by Lowry."