The most original sea painter since Turner? Lowry

In 1958 an elderly gentleman staying at the Castle Hotel in Berwick-upon-Tweed gave the receptionist a doodle he had made on the hotel’s notepaper. She kept it in a box and 43 years later, on the advice of Antiques Roadshow, sold it at auction for £8,000.

A contemporary photograph shows that gentleman in his trademark trilby, dark suit and tie – no casual wear for L.S. Lowry – standing on the pier with Berwick in the background. Lowry (1887-1976) is not best known for his paintings of the sea, but there are 21 – including the receptionist’s sketch – in this interesting little exhibition in the Northumbrian town which he regular visited, and they cast him in an unaccustomed light.

Lowry discovered Berwick in the mid-1930s while on a holiday prescribed by his doctor as a cure for exhaustion, but his love of the sea went back to family holidays on the Lancashire coast and days out with his mother to Lytham St Annes.