Going to the Match

The present work is a sketch for the celebrated 1953 painting of the same name (see lot 9 in the Modern British & Irish Art Evening sale on 19^th October). One of Lowry’s finest and best-loved creations, Going to the Match is a significant social document about the history of football and life in the North of England.

In this rare, preparatory sketch for the painting, Lowry lays out the essential components of Going to the Match’s composition. In addition to a detailed study of the forbidding and austere architecture of the Burnden Park stadium itself, the main elements of concern to Lowry on display in this sketch are the patterns and displacement of the crowd around it. In particular, Lowry here outlines how they struggle towards the building and then align themselves in neat queues around each of its turnstiles. Indeed, perhaps most prominent in this sketch are the outsize costs of admission that Lowry has recorded alongside each turnstile in an enlarged manner that also translates over to the finished painting. Such overt emphasis on the price of admission also seems to stress the social importance of the game for a largely proletarian audience often reluctant to part with their hard-won earnings.