Wigan Album

I have never been a fan of Isherwood's paintings although the one he is holding up looks nice.....could it be a painting of Wigan Lane, where he lived, I wonder? However, some years ago we were in the Eden Camp Wartime Museum in Malton, North Yorkshire, and a painting took my eye. To be honest I can't recall the subject of it now but I was surprised to find it was by Lawrence Isherwood.

The light haired lady on the left of the photo bears a strong resemblence to a lady named Margaret who worked at HJ Heinz?

I think that’s the nude that caused all the controversy as it was meant to be Princess Margaret. I wonder what he got for that one….probably a clout round his earhole!

Yes, and he also got Mary Whitehouse in a tizzy about it too, she would have been phoning her friend Ted Heath complaining about it.

The shop may well have been Atkinson's grocers that was on Mesnes Road - he did some trading with paintings there, and he also paid with paintings at the chip shop on Earl Street, Tony Callaghan who has the '15s' pubs his parents had the chip shop then, and he, according to a news article had them hung in one of his pubs.
There was another artist like Isherwood and at that time too, he advertised himself has the sausage and egg artist, though he was in St Helens and apparently if you gave him a pound of sausage and six eggs; then he'd give you a painting, anyone else remember him. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Graham-Sausage-Artist-Helens-Merseyside-ebook/dp/B00DTK54QS

I don't like Isherwood's paintings, though many do and can pay thousands for one, some folks on ebay and the like are paintings fakes and selling them too, one listing I was reading at one-time was saying that they do house clearances, and recently they had cleared a house of an old lady and had come across a lot of paintings wrapped up in the attic, some signed Isherwood, I'll bet the paint was still wet too.

Some of his paintings are quite nice of French scenes Cyril. I don’t like his others. I find it quite sad that he had to give away his paintings for groceries though. Surely he wasn’t so down on his uppers to stoop to that.

He was eccentric and had issues but I have no talent for painting and always wonder how he saw things in his mind.Some of his paintings are crazy to me but some are very good.

I-think he was slightly ahead of his time PW with his style of painting. I can’t stand modern stuff. I have to say Theodore Major’s paintings were worse than Isherwood's. All in the name of ‘ abstract’! Whatever that is.

I agree with you about Theodore Major's paintings, Veronica!

I never liked Isherwood's art but I did manage to purchase one of his works when it appeared priced were about to rise considerably. But I only bought as a potential investment. I guess it's now worth at least 6 times more that I paid.