A famous Lowry painting, prints of which hand in many homes around Britain, Coming From The Mill, depicting people leaving their workplace, one of the hundreds of cotton mills around the Lancashire cotton region, is a typical, warts and all depiction of an aspect of working class life. Painting the workers both at work and leisure was the central theme of all Lowry's great works

He first became popular in the industrial areas of England probably because he represented the people and places honestly. His 'Matchstick men' as some crotics disparagingly referred to them may not have depicted with the photo - realism of a pre - impressionist portrait painter the featues of his subjects but anyone who recalls the era, as I do, will testify that the simplistic figures captured the essential being of a type of person, the soul of the industrial worker. The smoky chimneys, hazy atmosphere and shabbiness of most people was not boring to Lowry, there was a beauty in it, the beauty of truth. Manchester and the surrounding towns, where most of Lowry's work was painted Because he was capturing the truth of working peoples' lives he felt no need to dress up the gery, smoke stained industrial landscapes of the area in which he passed his whole life.

Lowry's greatness emerged because he did not seek out the aesthetically pleasing but painted his view of the reality of life for the great majority of people.