Laurence Stephen Lowry was a British painter best known for his idiosyncratic depictions of the industrial yards around Manchester. In his mature works, he balanced the frenetic movement of factory workers rendered as matchstick-like strokes against the backdrop of imposing industrial smoke stacks. Though Lowry was trained in academic drawing, much like Henri Rousseau he instead chose to develop his own method of a unique “naïve” style. Born on November 1, 1887 in Stretford, England, he went on to study under the French Impressionist Adolphe Valette at the Manchester School of Art before attending the Royal Technical College in Salford under Edward John Bernard Taylor. Taylor advised Lowry to make his figures and buildings more prominent, and so he began setting them against a white ground, using only four other colors: vermillion, Prussian blue, ivory black, and yellow ochre. It wasn’t until the 1940s that Lowry found success, going on to be appointed the Official Artist of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. He had as lasting influence on a younger generation of British painters like James Lawrence Isherwood, and his works are in the collections of the National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, the Manchester City Art Gallery, and the Tate Gallery in London, among others. He died on February 23, 1976 in Glossop, England.