On show at last: the genius of the Secret Lowry of Warrington
ERIC TUCKER was so secretive about his artistic talent that his paintings were never seen by the public in his lifetime.
Now works left by the man known as “the secret Lowry” are being exhibited in a gallery for the first time.
The labourer made 400 oil and watercolour paintings and thousands of sketches in the front parlour of his terraced house in Warrington, Cheshire, over six decades. But his depictions of the pubs and streets of north-west England were only discovered after he died at 86 in July last year.
Tucker’s work has attracted comparisons with LS Lowry and was hailed as an important discovery for British art after it was found by his family.
His dream of an exhibition in his home town has now been fulfilled, as Warrington Museum & Art Gallery stages a retrospective called Eric Tucker: The Unseen Artist. It features 70 paintings and a recreation of the parlour he used as a studio in the home he shared with his mother.
Tony Tucker, Eric’s brother, told the BBC: “I’m very proud for him... He would have loved it. I’m sorry he’s not there [to see it].”
Eric Tucker, who was a professional boxer in the Fifties, was known to paint in his spare time, but his family had no idea he was so prolific. Only one of his paintings was displayed in his lifetime.
Tony said he only got a sense of how many paintings his brother did shortly before his death. “I found his paintings in the bedrooms, in the loft, in the store room, even in the garden shed they were stacked,” he added. “Even I hadn’t realised how much work he’d produced. So that was quite a shock to me.”
Many of the works feature characters from a bygone era drinking, smoking and wearing flat caps in traditional pubs. He once went to a pub quiz and surreptitiously sketched drinkers on the back of his answer sheet, Janice Hayes, the exhibition’s curator, said.
“We knew that Eric had expressed to Tony that he would have liked an exhibition in his home town, so it’s nice to feel that we’re able to honour that.”
Art critic Ruth Millington, who wrote the exhibition catalogue, says Tucker painted “with authenticity and a sophisticated innocence”, capturing “the psychological dramas of ordinary, working-class people” and hailed the discovery as “a significant contribution to modern British art”.
More than 2,000 people visited a display of Tucker’s art staged in his house after his death but this is the first time it has been exhibited in a gallery.
Eric Tucker: The Unseen Artist