L.S. Lowry in the final decade of his life, pictured in front of some of his paintings.
Though L.S. Lowry was frequently labelled as a “Sunday painter”, he was, in fact, far more than that; as he once said, “I’m a Sunday painter who paints every day of the week.” Over time, his distinctive prints and paintings of matchstick figures set against dour industrial landscapes captured the attention of the world, and he remains one of the most popular artists in the market today.
Indeed, Lowry’s work consistently fetches high prices at auction, especially in his native United Kingdom. Despite being best known as a painter, Lowry was also a prolific printmaker, and prints account for 70% of his work sold at auction, usually fetching between £1,000 and £5,000.
Below is a list of L.S. Lowry’s seven most expensive prints sold at auction. If you would like to know more about how much an L.S. Lowry print might be worth, or how to sell it, get in touch with Mark Littler today.
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Going To The Match
This is undeniably Lowry’s most popular print, accounting for 18 out of the artist’s 20 most expensive prints sold at auction. Based on Lowry’s iconic 1953 painting of the same name, the prints date from 1972 and feature several quintessentially Lowry elements, including a mass of matchstick figures, a limited colour palette, and a bleak industrial backdrop.
Going to the Match depicts football fans surging towards Burnden Park, once the home ground of the Bolton Wanderers, and it is a testament to Lowry’s lifelong love of the game (though he himself was an avid Manchester City supporter). The most expensive Going to the Match print was sold by Bonhams in June 2023 for £34,000, setting a new record for the artist.
Going to the Match sold by Bonham’s in 2023
‘Group Of People’
Even within the vast crowds that populate Lowry’s prints and paintings, the figures tend to exude an acute sense of loneliness. It’s the loneliness of the anonymous individual in a large city, and the kind of loneliness which can be exacerbated by the presence of others. This isolation is visible across all of Lowry’s work, even amongst small groups of figures. One such example is this print from 1968, which was sold by Adam Partridge Auctioneers & Valuers in April 2024 for £29,000. The inherent loneliness of Lowry’s work might stem from the artist’s difficult childhood and reclusive nature, but it is also a shrewd observation of the way society was changing as communities shrunk and cities expanded into the modern metropolises we know today.
Group of People sold by Adam Partridge in 2024
A Street Full Of People
Lowry often claimed he used only five colours: ivory black, Prussian blue, vermillion, yellow ochre, and flake white, stating, “I am a simple man, and I use simple materials”. This lithograph from 1966 has an even more limited range, the only colour coming from the unique hand addition of two figures and a dog in blue crayon. The print is exemplary of L.S. Lowry’s somewhat naïve, almost childlike style, and it was sold by Christie’s in March 2020 for £17,000.
A Street Full of People sold by Christie’s in 2020
A Village On A Hill
Unusually for Lowry, this 1966 print is not overshadowed by looming industrial buildings or plumes of smoke; it is, in fact, a far more bucolic image of Britain, depicting simple village life and community. The print was part of an edition of 75 published by London’s Ganymed Press, with whom Lowry collaborated in the 1960s to create 16 original lithographs, each of which was produced in small, limited edition runs, making them extremely valuable in today’s market. A Village on a Hill was sold by Capes Dunn & Co in October 2015 for £12,500.
A Village on a Hill sold by Capes Dunn & Co in 2015
The Pavilion
This lithograph was also published by Ganymed Press, and it was sold by Peter Wilson in April 2019 for £10,300, more than £4,000 above its estimate. Rather than the usual industrial cityscapes of Lowry’s work, this is a print of people enjoying a day out by the sea, and it is far more joyful than many of the artist’s other pieces.
This is perhaps due to Lowry’s lifelong love of the sea; as he said, “I have been fond of the sea all my life, how wonderful it is, yet how terrible it is.” Though Lowry spent most of his life around Greater Manchester, he took several trips to Berwick-upon-Tweed, and later to Sunderland, and many of his most popular pieces are seascapes or beach scenes.
Tree In A Square
This 1969 lithograph was one of the 16 created in collaboration with Ganymed Press, and it was sold by Capes Dunn & Co in October 2015 for £10,000, exceeding its top estimate by £3,000. The print features Lowry’s instantly-recognisable matchstick figures, a style he developed as a young man when he was working as a rent collector during the day (which he continued to do for most of his life) and attending art classes in the evening.
Castle On The Sands
This is another of the prints Lowry created with Ganymed Press, and it was sold by Capes Dunn & Co in October 2015 for £9,500. The print combines Lowry’s delight in the sea with the usual matchstick-figure crowds that dominate his work, and it has an odd, almost whimsical feel to it. When describing his style, Lowry explained: “Natural figures would have broken the spell… so I made my figures half unreal… I was not thinking very much about the people. I did not care for them in the way a social reformer does. They are part of a private beauty that haunted me. I loved them and the houses in the same way: as part of a vision.”
