Masculinity and Isolation in the Self-Portraits of L.S. Lowry

The 2013 Tate Britain exhibition *Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life* argued that L.S. Lowry (Laurence Stephen Lowry) was primarily "a painter of the industrial city and its working class". I nuance this social-realist narrative by analysing Lowry's self-portraits with regard to understandings of masculinity, in particular the "Manchester Man" ideal. This article argues that, through his self-portraits, Lowry negotiated the contradiction between his ambition to paint and the pressure to earn a wage as the household breadwinner. These conflicting identities---understood by Lowry especially through the writings of French philosopher François de La Rochefoucauld---had repercussions for his physical and mental health, as portrayed in his self-portraits of the 1930s and later metaphorical self-portraits. Overall, I argue that his paintings provide emotionally complex perspectives on his inner life and self-fashioning as an artist, in light of shifting expectations around masculinity, and his experience of isolation in twentieth-century Britain.