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A 1928 painting by L.S. Lowry, thought to be the earliest known depiction of one of his most familiar subjects, spectators heading to a sporting event, will be offered at Sotheby’s in London on 29 June. Going to the Match carries an estimate of £2,000,000 to 3,000,000 and appears in the house’s inaugural British Art: Modern / Contemporary sale.
Though Lowry is best known for his images of football, it is a rugby match he chose to paint first, a nod to the importance of the Rugby League to communities in the north of England. The work is one of only a small number of paintings of the sport known by the artist. A red flag flying by the ground and red scarves worn by several figures in the crowd point to the Salford Red Devils, Lowry’s local team.
The painting has remained in the same family collection since 1972 and had been exhibited only once before, in 1966. Ahead of the auction it will travel to New York, Edinburgh and Dublin for public exhibitions, then go on view at Sotheby’s New Bond Street from 22 to 29 June.
Lowry painted the work in the same year he completed a thirteen-year stint of part-time art school, which he attended while working as a rent collector. It reflects the influence of his Manchester teacher, the French Impressionist Adolphe Valette, though Lowry took the city’s industrial environment as his lifelong subject rather than the parks and boulevards favoured by the French painters.
That atmosphere is felt in the monochrome palette and heavy clouds of the picture, a cold, drab day as the crowd makes its way past grey factories and a billowing chimney toward the ground. Frances Christie, deputy chairman of Sotheby’s UK & Ireland, noted that the figures lean forward in unison, emphasising their common purpose as they are drawn to the rugby posts on the left of the canvas.
The work anchors a new sale dedicated to a century of British art, staged with a pre-sale exhibition at the New Bond Street galleries and live-streamed to remote bidders. Sotheby’s introduced its live-stream auction format in June 2020 and has since held 19 such sales, totalling more than $1.6 billion.
(Press Release)
