'Sir Ian McKellen demands that The Tate Gallery, London sell 23 works by the Manchester artist L.S.Lowry, rather than continue to store them '
Shown above is the painting 'Industrial Landscape', the only work of 23 paintings by L.S. Lowry in the Tate's collection to have been exbitited in its London galleries.
The Tate has been challenged to put its collection of paintings by LS Lowry up for sale if it intends to continue to exclude them from its London galleries.
The actor Sir Ian McKellen threw down the challenge in a joint attack by leading figures from the art world which questioned whether
the "matchstick men painter" has been sidelined as too northern and provincial.
"Over the years, silly lies have been thrown around that he was only a Sunday painter, an amateur, untrained and naive,"
said McKellen, who narrates a highly critical television programme about Lowry's "exclusion" which was screened by ITV1 on Easter Day.
The programme is called Perspectives; 'Looking for Lowry'.
The film sees others line up to condemn the fact that the Tate has shown only one of its 23 Lowrys, 'Industrial Landscape', painted in 1955
and owned by the gallery for 50 years, and then only briefly.
The Tate denied any deprecation of "northern-ness" in Lowry's work, pointing to its record of establishing Tate Liverpool
and supporting new Hepworth Wakefield gallery, which opens next month. Henry Moore, the Yorkshire sculptor and contemporary of Barbara Hepworth,
has also been much feted by the gallery, whose founder Sir Henry Tate, the sugar mogul, was one of Lowry's fellow-Lancastrians.
The Tate said it planned to give Lowry space when its galleries are extended in 2013, but Tate Britain's head of displays, Chris Stephens,
said in the television programme: "What makes Lowry so popular is the same thing which stops him being the subject of serious critical attention.
What attracts so many is a sort of sentimentality about him. He's a victim of his own fan base."
Which frankly is nonsense, when we consider the works of Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, Picasso....etc...
McKellen said: "If the Tate feels no responsibility to give the art viewing public their favourite painters to view, perhaps they could let their collection go elsewhere.
They could pass them on to a gallery like the Lowry, which shares its visitors' tastes.
Or perhaps a touring retrospective, with a twist; the exhibits would be for sale."
Under such conditions, it would be doubtful that such any exhibition would make it past the first day,
as Lowry's paintings have become so sought after that, many collectors are prepared to pay millions of pounds for one of his paintings.
However, the fact remains that whether or not The Tate gallery can be viewed as a dinosour and is slow to react to the ever changing art world,
the paintings of L.S.Lowry are now selling for 20+ times the record for a Modern British artist,
making the work second only to other Great Artworld Masters such as Van Gogh.
Possibly, Lowry's success is due to the fact that his life was genuinely to portray the world as he saw it,
and he had little interest in any financial gains.