Going to the match

The PFA have decided to sell Lowry's famous [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] to raise money for former players with financial problems or dementia etc and is estimated it will bring in £5 to 8 million for the Player's Foundation - now financially independent of the PFA.
Former BWFC winger Gordon Taylor said "it's the greatest football painting of all time"
He would admire it - they're all thinner and fitter-looking than he was when he was running up and down our wing

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If any of you have a few mil to spare you may wish to buy it for Nuts.

I expect that Eddie Davies would have been interested when this picture came up for auction in 1999 but it was sold for four times the estimate to a flushed with cash PFA.

The picture itself is odd depicting a fairly accurate view of the front facade of Burnden Park prior to it being re-faced c.1955 but a childlike depiction of the Great Lever Stand bearing no resemblance whatsoever to that stand or any other stand at a football ground that I can recall.

I can only imagine that Lowry painted some of the picture in situ at the ground before taking it away and finishing it in a bit of haste and without actually caring a jot about accuracy.

Lowry was an impressionist who developed his own style.
Details are obviously incorrect and he's taken great liberties with the Lever End, proximity of the houses, background view etc - but accuracy is irrelevant as the picture gives a great "impression" of folk "going to the match" and the scurrying conveys the pre match tension beautifully.
I like it.

Great investment by the PFA by the way.

wanderlust wrote:Lowry was an impressionist who developed his own style.
Details are obviously incorrect and he's taken great liberties with the Lever End, proximity of the houses, background view etc - but accuracy is irrelevant as the picture gives a great "impression" of folk "going to the match" and the scurrying conveys the pre match tension beautifully.
I like it.

Great investment by the PFA by the way.

I've always liked Lowry's paintings, so much so in fact that many years ago I travelled to Salford Museum/Art gallery (long before the fancy place his collection is hung now) to see it.

Well I was shocked to put it mildly.

Yes there were several paintings in the style we all know but the vast amount of his work were frankly weird and perverted...

Lowry produced a series of erotic works that were not seen until after his death. The paintings depict the mysterious "Ann" figure, who appears in portraits and sketches produced throughout his lifetime, enduring sexually charged and humiliating tortures. When these works were exhibited at the Art Council's Centenary exhibition at the Barbican in 1988, art critic Richard Dorment wrote in The Daily Telegraph that these works "reveal a sexual anxiety which is never so much as hinted at in the work of the previous 60 years." The group of erotic works, which are sometimes referred to as "the mannequin sketches" or "marionette works", are kept at the Lowry Centre and are available for visitors to see on request. Some are also brought up into the public display area on a rotation system. Manchester author Howard Jacobson has argued that the images are just part of Lowry's melancholy and tortured view of the world and that they would change the public perception of the complexity of his work if they were more widely seen.

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It would seem from the Wiki link above, that most of those paintings I saw at the time are now seldom if ever put on public display, presumably to protect the perceived image of the painter and preserve his reputation as commented on above?

I still like Lowry's 'matchstick men' paintings enormously but to me he was simply a one trick pony and apart from the theme which he invented, he was unable to turn his hand at drawing or painting anything else worthy of a mention.

Always loved this self portrait.
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wanderlust wrote:Lowry was an impressionist who developed his own style.
Details are obviously incorrect and he's taken great liberties with the Lever End, proximity of the houses, background view etc - but accuracy is irrelevant as the picture gives a great "impression" of folk "going to the match" and the scurrying conveys the pre match tension beautifully.
I like it.

Great investment by the PFA by the way.

Monet was an impressionist too but when he painted a Japanese style bridge in his garden it did look like a Japanese style bridge.

Gordon Taylor was behind this purchase and it does seem to have been a very good investment. It might help deflect some of the criticism levelled at him for his monster monster wages.

There appears to have been a bit of 'financial chair shifting' going on at the PFA. Not before time some might say and this might well be part of it.

The Players Foundation's last Annual Report is 109 pages long and a veritable tsunami of self-congratulating hype. But I doubt there would be many that would bother to read it and you would need to get to Page 99 before you gained some idea of how much 'the fat cats' were drawing. I'm still by no means certain that this is all of it.

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This pleading poverty should imo be viewed with scepticism. The PFA have quite a collection of Lowry pictures and other 'memorabilia' and it might need a bit of forensics to figure out where all the broadcasting income is going now.

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It’s been sold to Salford museum for £7.8 million. A few years ago the PFA commissioned an anthology to this painting and appealed for fans recollections of 1953 when the picture was painted. 
They got two responses.