One of L.S. Lowry’s most celebrated paintings is going on display at Birkenhead’s Williamson Art Gallery and Museum.
Lowry’s painting, Going to the Match, is currently on a tour of venues across the Northwest, and the Williamson will be the only gallery in Merseyside displaying it.
Going to the Match, painted in 1953, depicts Lowry’s two most popular subjects, industry in the northwest and football.
The canvas shows a crowd gathering at Burnden Park, the former home of Bolton Wanderers, surrounded by industrial mills, factories, and terraced houses.
That year, the Football Association, celebrating its 90th anniversary, had launched a competition called ‘Football and the Fine Arts’ and Lowry’s painting beat 1,700 entries to win first prize.
The painting had been on display at The Lowry, Salford since it opened in 2000, courtesy of a loan by the then owners the Professional Footballers Association (PFA).
Following a high-profile campaign, Going to the Match was purchased by The Lowry at the Modern British & Irish Art Sale at Christie’s in London in October 2022, thanks to the generous support of The Law Family Charitable Foundation.
The painting returned to public display at The Lowry in November 2022 as part of Salford’s Lowry Collection and the gallery is working with galleries and venues across the Northwest to ensure that the renowned painting can be enjoyed by the widest possible audience.
Supported by a £95,000 grant from Arts Council England through its National Lottery Project Grants programme and additional support from the Sir Bobby Charlton Foundation, the tour will mean this iconic painting can be enjoyed by the widest possible audience across the region.
The exhibition at the Williamson will run from 19th April – 27th July.
(Featured image by Dunk under Creative Commons Licence).
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
