Laurence Stephen Lowry, R.A. (1887-1976)

The Creditors' Meeting illustrates a local contemporary drama, played out for us at a meeting of creditors. Lowry's linear drawings of this era almost all feature groups or crowds of working men, caught huddled together discussing issues of class and money, as seen here, often presenting one male protagonist who leads the debate, a practice he formulated in the earlier examples Strike Meeting, of 1921 and Spectators, of 1924. This drawing has particularly personal connotations, with the artist portraying a friend as the young debtor, seated right, looking towards the spectator and even depicts himself, seen in the standing figure on the far left, portrayed as a creditor. This is described by David Carr, a fellow painter and good friend of Lowry, who in the catalogue for the travelling 1966 Arts Council solo exhibition L.S. Lowry, wrote about the 1944 oil painting of the same subject. In it he states that the meeting seems cordial and all seems to be well with the creditors, which is surprising given the strained financial situation the man finds himself in, finding himself almost bankrupt. Carr states that this picture depicts the moment when the accountant, standing right, proclaims 'Gentleman, you will be glad to hear that we can pay three shillings in the pound!' saving the man from his fiscal woes.

David Carr was a keen collector of Lowry's work and despite their differences in age and background, they became close friends. Letters documenting the exchange of their artistic ideas reveals that Carr introduced the older Lowry to the younger generation of artists, his enthusiasm and gregarious personality becoming a welcome comfort to Lowry's isolated existence. Carr was particularly fond of the soul and character that Lowry imbued in his images of town fringes and run-down areas and the people that lived there, finding a 'queer and often ghastly beauty' in them (Carr in a letter to Lowry, 5th December 1943). The sensitivity and humanity that Lowry evoked was one of the motivations behind Carr's collections of the artist's work, choosing those that portrayed best the gesture and personality of his subjects.