The sudden death of Lowry expert remains mystery
Inquest told he was found at Bulgarian holiday home
MOVING tributes have been paid to an art dealer who was the ‘world’s leading expert’ on LS Lowry and whose death at his Bulgarian holiday home remains shrouded in mystery.
Dad-of-one Ivan Aird, 57, from Stockport, was found dead at the apartment in the resort of Sunny Beach last June.
A post-mortem examination was inconclusive and a coroner has ruled she is unable to say what caused his ‘sudden’ and ‘unexpected’ death.
Ivan, born and raised in Cheadle, was an art dealer, like his father George Aird, who was friend and agent to the renowned Stretford-born artist Lowry.
Ivan would regularly spend time with Lowry as a child, which sparked a life-long passion for and love of his work.
When he became an adult he set up his own art dealership and was highly thought of in the art world, where he was considered the world’s leading authority on Lowry.
His heartbroken wife Louise has now paid tribute to her husband who she said was a ‘doting’ dad who ‘lived life to the full.’
The inquest at South Manchester Coroner’s Court heard that last summer he had travelled over to stay at the flat the family owns in Nessebar Fort
Club on the coastal Sunny Beach resort, close to the city of Burgas.
He had been redecorating and updating the apartment they had acquired over a decade ago.
“He carried an oven up three flights of stairs and I was worried that could have contributed to something,” Louise said.
The hearing was told Louise last spoke to her husband on Monday, June 19, and that the last known contact anyone had had with him was at 3pm on Tuesday, 20 June when he had told the person he spoke to that he was ‘really worn out and needed a rest’.
After this time, the family was unable to get hold of him.
“I thought ‘something isn’t right’” his wife told the hearing.
The family asked a friend, who was also in the country, to go round and check on him.
When they visited, on Thursday, June 22, they were forced to break into the property and once inside found him unresponsive on the sofa.
The local police were alerted and they carried out an investigation.
They concluded there were no suspicious circumstances.
A post-mortem examination was carried out when his body was repatriated to the UK.
It was unable to determine a cause of death which was recorded as being ‘unascertained.’
The hearing was told he had suffered a neck injury in a serious car accident in the 1990s.
Louise said he had been diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2022, but was in remission with all his recent test results clear.
However, the pathologist said neither of these had caused or contributed to his death. She also ruled out any link to a fall he suffered shortly before flying to Bulgaria.
She said he might have suffered a sudden cardiac arrest due to an arrhythmia but that there was insufficient evidence for her to conclude definitively on this.
Senior coroner Alison Mutch recorded a narrative conclusion that Ivan ‘died suddenly in Bulgaria, where the cause of death could not be established at post-mortem, but police in Bulgaria didn’t find any suspicious circumstances’.
She told Louise: :”We have been trying everything we can to be able to bring some closure to you as a family.
“I am just sorry you lost your husband in such sudden and unexpected circumstances.
“Please accept my condolences and please pass them on to the rest of the family.”
Following the hearing Louise, Ivan’s wife of 28 years, told of her and her daughter, Sabrina’s shock at his death and the mystery surrounding it.
“We thought he was going to be fine,” she said.
“The cancer was staying away. It was just so sudden, and such a big shock.
“And I’m just so sad we will never know why. We thought we were going to have many more years with him.”
She paid a heartwarming tribute to her husband who she said ‘lived life to the full’.
“He was funny. He was helpful - he always wanted to help people.
“He lived life to the full. Nothing would hold him back or stop him. “He always had a project on the go whether that was art, or something else.
“He was always on to the next thing.”
Ivan had said some of his earliest memories were of going to LS Lowry’s house in Mottram, Tameside, with his father George, who was his agent and who bought a large proportion of his work directly from him.
In 1976, George Aird owned the original of ‘Going to the Match’, then valued at £30,000 but which the Lowry Museum last year paid £7.8 million to acquire from the Professional Footballer’s
Association (PFA).
Ivan, who was 10 years old when Lowry died in February 1976, was five years old when he bought his piece of his art - a black and white print that sparked his lifelong obsession and saw him establish his own dealership Grove Fine Art.
“He was the world’s leading expert on Lowry,” Louise said.
“He was too humble to say that about himself but he was. Without a shadow of a doubt.
“He had grown up with him and from being a small child was absolutely besotted with him and adored his work. He was everything to him.
“He travelled all over the country buying and selling. He was the man to go to for anything Lowryrelated.
“He was very well thought of in the art world, especially in the north.
“Everyone came to him for advice.”
As well as art he loved classic cars and motorbikes.
But above all he was an adoring and doting father she said. “He just absolutely loved Sabrina,” she said.
“She was the apple of his world. He took her everywhere with him. He will be so sadly and greatly missed by us all.”
“It was just so sudden, and such a big shock”