In 1930 the curator of Manchester Art Gallery asked L. S. Lowry to produce some paintings of Piccadilly.

“I wonder if you will consider my suggestion that you should at your leisure make one or two studies of Piccadilly as it is today with the sunken garden, the loafers, the ruins [infirmary] and all the rest of the mess and muddle.”

Yet the Gallery rejected the work he painted and he was told to try again, which he refused to do. Ironically the City now owns a later, locally-set Lowry painting, Piccadilly Gardens (1954).

This is just one of the paintings we will be featuring.