“I’m trying to tick off all the artists.”
After rave reviews for his portrayal of JMW Turner in 2014, Timothy Spall is to star in a film about another British artist – LS Lowry.
Shooting begins this week on Mrs Lowry & Son, directed by Adrian Noble, a former head of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
The film will portray Lowry pursuing art as a hobby while working as a rent collector and living with his overbearing mother, played by Vanessa Redgrave.
Speaking to the Guardian, Spall joked: “I’m trying to tick off all the artists.”
Spall’s performance in Mike Leigh’s Mr Turner won him the best actor award at the 2014 Cannes film festival. The Observer described him as “a giant” in a “visually ambitious biopic”.
The actor did extensive research for that role, even taking a long course in painting. A refresher session was unnecessary for Lowry because, he said, “there’s very little painting” in the film.
“I do paint a little bit [in the film]. It’s mainly about his relationship with his mother and how that influenced his work … he was an only child. It’s about this very unusual close relationship [with] his mother, who he adored … how that informed his work and how that work happened late in his life.”
Spall’s previous films include Denial, a courtroom drama about the libel case brought by the Hitler apologist David Irving, and The Journey, a fictionalised account of the relationship between Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness that developed during the Northern Ireland peace process.
He referred to those roles when asked how he planned to portray Lowry: “I’m trying to do him as he was. There’s not much footage of him, but there’s enough for me to know what he looked like and sounded like. He wasn’t a public figure particularly, so I don’t have to worry about trying to be Irving or Paisley.”
The film will be shot in Greater Manchester and London. Asked whether it would use locations from Lowry’s life, Spall said: “Yes … a lot of that amazing landscape has gone, but they’ve found bits and pieces. We have to move about a bit.”
Lowry was born in Manchester in 1887 and died in 1976. A purpose-built gallery, The Lowry in Salford, houses the world’s largest public collection of his paintings and drawings.
He is seen as the quintessential painter of northern, working-class life, of industrial landscapes filled with matchstick figures and chimneys belching out black smoke.
Although he is adored by the general public and his paintings fetch seven-figure sums at auction, it was not until 2013 that the Tate staged a major Lowry retrospective.
| Laurence Stephen Lowry RBA RA | |
|---|---|
Lowry at work
| |
| Born | Laurence Stephen Lowry 1 November 1887 Stretford, Lancashire, England |
| Died | 23 February 1976 (aged 88) Glossop, Derbyshire, England |
| Education | Manchester Municipal College Salford Technical College |
| Known for | Painting |
| Notable work |
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| Awards | |
Laurence Stephen Lowry RBA RA (1 November 1887 – 23 February 1976) was an English artist. Many of his drawings and paintings depict Pendlebury, Lancashire, where he lived and worked for more than 40 years, and also Salford and its surrounding areas.
Lowry is famous for painting scenes of life in the industrial districtsof North West England in the mid-20th century. He developed a distinctive style of painting and is best known for his urban landscapes peopled with human figures often referred to as "matchstick men". He painted mysterious unpopulated landscapes, brooding portraits and the unpublished "marionette" works, which were only found after his death.
Due to his use of stylized figures and the lack of weather effects in many of his landscapes he is sometimes characterized as a naïve[1]"Sunday painter", although this is not the view of the galleries that have organised retrospectives of his works.[2][3][4][5]
A large collection of Lowry's work is on permanent public display in The Lowry, a purpose-built art gallery on Salford Quays named in his honour. Lowry rejected five honours during his life, including a knighthood in 1968, and consequently holds the record for the most rejected British honours.[6] On 26 June 2013 a major retrospective opened at the Tate Britain in London, his first at the Tate, and in 2014 his first solo exhibition outside the UK was held in Nanjing, China.[7]
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