A painting by LS Lowry beloved by football fans and art enthusiasts has been bought by the Lowry arts centre in Salford, saving it from disappearing into a private collection.
The arts centre paid £7.8m including fees for Going to the Match, painted in 1953, at an auction on Wednesday evening. The purchase was made possible by a gift from the Law Family charitable foundation, which was set up by the hedge fund manager and Conservative party donor Andrew Law and his wife, Zoë. The painting had been estimated to fetch £5m-£8m.
Julie Fawcett, the chief executive of the Lowry, said: “We firmly believe this iconic artwork must remain on public view, so it can continue to be seen by the broadest possible audiences, for free.
“This evening, thanks to an incredibly generous gift from the Law Family charitable foundation, we are delighted to have purchased Going to the Match 1953 for the city’s collection of LS Lowry works. We look forward to bringing it home to Salford, where it can continue to delight and attract visitors to the Andrew and Zoë Law galleries at the Lowry.”
Andrew Law said: “This LS Lowry painting belongs in Salford on public view, close to his birthplace, where he was educated and where he lived. Place matters. LS Lowry’s depiction of people attending a football match is just one of his many incredible genres of work, but it is undoubtedly his most iconic.”
The painting has been on public display at the Lowry arts centre for 22 years, after it was bought in 1999 by the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), the union for current and former players, for £1.9m.
At the time, Gordon Taylor, then the PFA’s chief executive, said it was “quite simply the finest football painting ever”.
The PFA decided this year to sell the painting after its charitable arm became a separate body, the Players Foundation, under a reorganisation prompted by a warning from the Charity Commission.
Bidding for the painting opened at £5m at Christie’s sale of modern British and Irish art. It was “selling for a good cause”, the auctioneer told the in-person and telephone bidders. The Players Foundation helps current and former players with matters including education, pensions, health and legal issues.
Last month, Paul Dennett, the mayor of Salford, and Fawcett made a joint appeal for the painting to stay in the public domain.
After the auction, Dennett said: “We emphatically believed Going to the Match should remain on public view, free to access where everyone can see it. I am delighted our campaign to save this critical and important painting has successfully resulted in the Lowry securing it tonight, for the city of Salford in perpetuity for generations to come, for residents and visitors to our great city.”
Lowry, famous for his stick-like figures and industrial scenes in the north-west of England in the mid-20th century, produced a number of football paintings, of which Going to the Match is the best known.
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The stadium in the painting was Burnden Park, the former home of Bolton Wanderers, close to Lowry’s home in Pendlebury. It was demolished in 1999 and the site is now a retail park.
As well as the crowds flocking to the turnstiles, the painting shows crowded terraces inside the stadium, surrounding terraced homes and factories in the background.
“Going to the Match is about emotion, excitement, the crowd gathering, the group experience,” Nicholas Orchard, the head of modern British and Irish art at Christie’s, said before the sale.
“Lowry was a great observer of people, particularly within the industrial landscape, and these football matches really captured the essence of what Lowry was trying to get to in his paintings.”