L.S. lowry, Self Portrait 1926 - The Lowry, Salford Norman Cornish, Self Portrait - Northumbria University Permanent Collection
Kith and Kinship – Cornish and Lowry at the Bowes Museum
On a bitterly cold day 37 stalwart members of the group made their way to Barnard Castle. There we were greeted by Vicky Sturr the curator, who gave us an introduction to the exhibition, which was assembled to examine the similarities and differences between the two men, one a loving, family man who drew sensitive portraits of his wife and children and the other, a single person who spent much of his life looking after his widowed, ailing mother. We started by being confronted by self-portraits of the two artists, on the left Laurence Stephen Lowry, giving us a look of curiosity from under the peak of a large cap, and on the right Norman Cornish, tousle-haired with a rather diffident expression as he studies us from behind heavy rimmed glasses. Vicky informed us that there were over fifty works by both artists drawn from a wide variety of sources and works had been chosen to reflect the social and community interests of each man, the contrast being that Norman Cornish was intimately connected with the community he came from, starting life as a working miner, whereas Lowry came from a middle class, albeit impoverished, background, who worked as a rent collector and was therefore somewhat detached from his subjects. This was demonstrated in some of Lowry’s pictures which contain walls or fences in the foreground separating the viewer from the subject. Cornish’s pictures by contrast involve the viewer directly in the scene, whether ascending the steel staircase into the winding house of the pit-head or standing at the bar in the pub after work, surrounded by working men in well-worn suits and the ubiquitous flat cap.
The viewing of the exhibition was rounded off with tea and (delicious) scones in Café Bowes. There were no complaints.
LS. Lowry 'Going to Work' - War Artists Commission Norman Cornish 'The Gantry Steps' - NormanCornish.com