An L.S. Lowry painting of an Easter fair, which has proven a favourite work among British prime ministers of the past 60 years, will continue its life at No.10 Downing Street after the UK prime minister Andy Burnham selected it for display. The work will return to the official prime minister’s residence after its appearance in a Lowry retrospective at the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, which opens tomorrow (24 October).
Lancashire Fair, Good Friday, Daisy Nook (1946) has been hung in 10 Downing Street under every UK premier from Harold Wilson to Keir Starmer. It was only absent under Tony Blair. The painting comes from the Government Art Collection (GAC), which comprises more than 15,000 works that are shown in UK government buildings and loaned out internationally.
The GAC has shared statistics about how often Lancashire Fair has been requested over the past 60 years, and under which prime ministers since Harold Wilson in the mid 1960s. The work has been displayed in Downing Street for 40 of the past 60 years, and has now will be there longer under Lowry fan Andy Burnham. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport, which oversees the GAC, can not think of any other work that has been requested as many times for Downing Street.
The work was first selected by the Yorkshire-born Wilson for his private office. “The story is that he had removed a portrait of Robert Walpole, our first prime minister, for a painting which showed the working class enjoying themselves,” Anthony Spira, director of the MK Gallery and co-curator of the new exhibition, tells The Art Newspaper.
Wilson tried to give Lowry a knighthood in 1968 but the reclusive artist turned it down, as he did in with the even higher offer of the Companion of Honour. That offer came just before Wilson handed over the premiership to James Callaghan.
Perhaps Lowry’s biggest fan was Margaret Thatcher, who wooed Lowry soon after becoming leader of the opposition Conservative party in early 1975, having learned he was a Tory voter and a tax collector. Thatcher, according to Spira, tried to meet him on several occasions only to discover that when she had finally succeeded, he had died the previous day in February 1976. She kept Lancashire Fair in her private office on becoming prime minister three years later.
John Major and his Tory successors placed the Lowry in a prominent position, usually on a main landing at the top of the famed staircase with its photos of previous prime ministers. A youngish Larry, the official resident cat or Chief Mouser, was snapped in 2012 asleep beneath the painting.
Andy Burnham, a Lowry fan and MP for a constituency near Daisy Nook in north Manchester, has asked for the work— which had returned to the GAC holdings briefly in advance of the MK Gallery show—to return to No.10 upon the exhibition’s conclusion, in February 2027.
The MK Gallery exhibition also includes Lowry’s The Pond. “Wilson selected it as the cover for his first Christmas card from Number Ten in 1964,” says Spira. On show too are two works not seen in public for more than 70 years—Beach Scene, Lancashire (1947), and, A Football Match (1932), a subject matter which the Manchester City and sometimes Bolton Wanderers supporter often painted.
