The Football Match, a painting billed by the Christies London as “a modern masterpiece†is going up for auction at Christie’s sale of 20th Century British Art and is expected to fetch something between £3.5m and £4.5m at the said auction in May. Painted by LS Lowry, this painting depicts his famous stick figures gathered at a match against a backdrop of several factories.
The painting is currently owned by a private collector and hasn’t been seen in public for the past 20 years. The highest that any Lowry painting has fetched till date was £3.8m for his painting Good Friday, Daisy Nook, in 2007. Another one his painting depicting a football match was bought for £1.9m by the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) in 1999, while the players’ union bought the 1953 picture, Going To The Match, at Sotheby’s in London.
Needless to say, Lowry was an avid football fan and his favourite team was the Manchester United. Lowry infact wasn’t even a full time artist. He worked for a property company in Manchester and painted only in his spare time. But his talent was such that he achieved enough recognition to appointed official artist at the coronation of the Queen in 1953. The General Post Office also issued a stamp in 1967 reproducing one of his paintings.
