...an artist whose work is particularly haunting and resonant in these bleak midwinter months: L. S. Lowry, famed for his foggy cityscapes. The artist was born in an area of the city called Stretford (home of Manchester United football club), just round the corner from my childhood home. It's the same area where the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst grew up, and where The Smiths' frontman Morrissey spent his childhood – I wonder if it's more than coincidental that the work of both Lowry and Morrissey is infused with melancholy, though both had a knack for alchemising hardship into art, turning gloominess into gold. Manchester was the first industrial city in the world and many of Lowry's paintings powerfully depict this aspect: Industrial Scene, Industrial Landscape, Our Town and A Manufacturing Town. Lowry's were images of the everyday working-class person (such as Going to Work), of the way place can seem to absorb and even consume people. It's not only places, but people who are also anonymous in some of his work... [https://artuk.org/discover/stories/the-art-of-manchester-a-journey-in-time-and-place/]