Case Study of James Lawrence Isherwood
James Lawrence Isherwood (1917 – 1989) was an English artist, born in Wigan, Lancashire. He often painted subject and images (landscapes, seascapes, and portraits) from the Wigan area in a style that became known as 'Wigan style'.
His style has been described as Impressionist/Expressionist, even though I believe that its closer to the latter.
Isherwood's work is represented in the permanent collections of the Hereford Museum and Art Gallery, the Warrington Museum and Art Gallery, the Salford Museum and Art Gallery.
He died on the 9th ofJune 1989 at the age of 72
In Higher End, Wigan, England. Since his death, the value of Isherwood's original paintings has increased steadily with a recent record auction price in excess of £8000. Isherwood painted a number of celebrities including Gracie Fields and boasts famous owners of his work including Prince Charles and LS Lowry.
Isherwood was a cobblers son born in Wigan. He started painting at the tender age of nine yet in the early years it was simply a hobby as his early career included working in a local company’s accounts department and his own family shoe business. However, this didn’t have any impact on his burning ambition of becoming an artist. He later took formal education in art from Wigan Technical College of Art, it is however as I have aforementioned very hard to characterise his style. His work is truly unique in every sense of the word, although it is more inclined towards expressionism.
Hepplestone Fine Art wrote about Lawrence in a previous article "Isherwood didn’t like stereotypes or wanted to be restricted by any rules. He had his own way of seeing things and putting them on canvas. With vibrant use of colors and strong brushwork, he is still considered one of the best expressionist painters the country has ever seen." Probably his formal education did not have much impact on his work and style for this reason.
Isherwood had the same education as Harry Walder 1909-1992 b when the latter began working at the local rolling mill in the 1920s attending evening classes at Wigan Technical College and painting in his spare time. He once remarked, “I always tried to make the people of Wigan proud of their town through my painting”
I believe that the two artists have a lot in common, although Isherwood's violent brushwork exudes darker themes and a deep search for positivity while in Walder's light and opaque colours you can see the love for his subjects.
Isherwood's paintings and the way he lived speak greatly of his appreciation of the world of sixty to seventy years before him, perhaps a character more befitting of the famous turn of the century School of Paris artists. Adorned in a long cape and sandals, his paintings were a true depiction of Wigan. Isherwood’s painting were simply an interpretation of the things he experienced in life.
The subjects in his paintings were often working class Northern people, with settings sometimes quite detailed in sometimes much simpler. He usually depicted the townscape as tough and dark, but there were always strokes of emotions and hope to give paintings a positive outlook. In fact I believe that Isherwood's point of view on urban and dirty scenes painted with abstract brushwork it looks soft and makes the beauty of its landscapes shine.
According to a study titled 'Secondary education and the working class: Wigan1920-1970' produced by Heyes and Malcolm K and available at Durham E-Theses Online, the lower classes in this period were very discoraggiate towards their own city and education.
I quote "When I arrived at the Secondary Modern School, I was subjected to a harsh, disciplined regime. Corporal punishment and verbal abuse ran alongside a very limited and book-based curriculum that was intended to prepare me for adult life.
Admittedly it was a period of full employment, and the Beveridge Welfare System was still in place, as it had been for nearly twenty years. This meant that on the completion of my four-year statutory course at the Secondary Modem
School, there were a wide number of semi-skilled manual and trade occupations for me to choose from, to start my working life.
During my early adult life as compositor at the local weekly newspaper, I tried to analyse why I had arrived at this situation, and I began to think! To think was hardly a skill I had been taught in contrast to people who had attended grammar
schools or universities, two of whom I bring to mind, journalists who had attended colleges at Cambridge and Oxford. They recognized some 'latent' talent in me, which had not yet been tapped."
I believe that the expression that artists like Isherwood and Walder were a window to a new way of seeing Wigan, and that the choice of their lower-class subjects shows their reality and at the time would resonate with the audience.
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