"Secret Lowry" paintings to go on show in London

NEARLY 50 paintings by Eric Tucker – the Warrington artist posthumously lauded by critics as “the secret Lowry” are to go on show in London next month.

Previous showings of Tucker’s work resulted in the fastest-selling exhibitions ever hosted by Mayfair galleries Connaught Brown and Alon Zakaim Fine Art.
The new immersive “At Home” exhibition will include 46 of Tucker’s oil paintings and watercolours from across his 60 years of painting, most of which have never before been seen in public.
Living room and pub settings will give viewers a more intimate insight into Tucker’s world and inspiration.

The exhibition will include a life-size recreation of his studio; the seemingly ordinary front room in which Tucker quietly produced all his work. The studio will be meticulously recreated at Alon Zakaim Fine Art from photographs of Tucker’s Warrington house and, in a special loan from his family, will feature many of the artist’s personal belongings.
Connaught Brown will be transformed into a pub setting, complete with oak-panelled bar, of the kind in which Tucker spent many hours sketching patrons, his paper and pencil hidden beneath the tabletop. Don’t expect any continental lagers or American pale ales, though the bar will be well stocked with ‘Tucker’s Palette’ – an extra strong bitter brewed in honour of the artist by Twisted Wheel Brew Company.
Anthony Brown and Alon Zakaim, Directors at the two host galleries, said: “We are proud to be able to present Tucker in context and give our clients more of an understanding of the environments that inspired such unique and extraordinary works”

Tony Tucker – Eric’s brother – added. “It’s amazing for me to think that here, in the heart of Mayfair, not only are my brother’s paintings on show but also a re-creation, a slice of the world he lived in. Alongside his work, a taste of the pubs he drank in as well as the front room of our council house home, transformed by my brother into his studio.
“This tiny parlour was, down the years, the workshop of his singular vision – a celebration of working-class life. A fanfare, in paint, for the common man.”
*Eric Tucker was born in Warrington in 1932. He left school at 14 and was an unskilled manual labourer and amateur boxer. He never married and never left home. He started painting in his 20s but few people, even his family, knew about it. But at the end of his life they discovered hundreds of his paintings in his terraced house.
After his death in 2018, the family opened his house as a gallery and staged an exhibition which attracted a crowd of thousands and global media coverage.