Biography
James Lawrence Isherwood was born and lived in Wigan, Lancashire, where he ran The Isherwood Gallery. He travelled extensively and had over 200 shows, including colleges at Oxford and Cambridge Universities. He painted a number of celebrities including the singer, Gracie Fields, round the world yachtsman, Sir Francis Chichester and Lord and Lady Weymouth.

Isherwood was an eccentric, controversial character whose work could produce telling images, as seen when a large body of his work was included in The Northern Art Show at the Mall Galleries in 1994. Isherwood is one of a number of Northern Artists who are now being re-discovered. He has a strong following in the North of England and his prices are increasing every year.

There are many similarities between Isherwood and Lowry, except unlike Lowry, Isherwood devoted his whole life to painting, whereas Lowry had a full time job until he retired in 1952. Isherwood went through bad times, some of his own making, but he did have a great regard for his paintings. He gave them away - sometimes - or would sell them for next to nothing. He wanted people to love his works - and those he dedicated to his mother (and there were thousands) he always refused to sell - even for good prices. These he marked with an "L" on the reverse for "Lily" and are now highly collectable.

He wore sandals without socks, which was a daring thing to do in Wigan at the time. He also sported a cape, goatee beard and long hair, and he painted hundreds of canvasses (including a portrait of Mary Whitehouse with five breasts) in an eccentric artistic life dominated by twin passions: alcohol and his mother. Many of his works depict local mills, streets and canals; others show scenes from Spain, Malta, London; rows of bottles (empty); racehorses; clowns; nudes; and of course his mother.

Although Isherwood was born in Wigan, he would probably have been happier cutting a dash in fin de siècle Paris and knocking round the bars with Toulouse Lautrec and the rest. "Painting drives me mad but I have to do it," he told friends. "It's the only thing I know".

He was so prolific that he held more than 200 one-man shows in galleries across the country and also set up shop under Boadicea's statue on Westminster Bridge in London and in a lay by on the East Lancs road, a busy dual carriageway near his home.

The Prince of Wales bought one of his pictures, as did LS Lowry. Isherwood also achieved some critical recognition: the Daily Herald found him "compassionate, gifted and dedicated" in 1962 and the Guardian called him "a great and uncompromising artist" in 1975.

"Lily was Isherwood's inspiration and he painted her many times, often as a Lancashire madonna. If she liked a picture, he would put an 'L' on the back and never sell it," said Mr Shryhane. "When Lily died in 1973, he was really stressed and he seemed to go a bit wild because she had kept a very tight rein on him."

In the late 1970s, he left Wigan and for a time and relished the brilliant light of the Mediterranean, spending time in Malta and Torremolinos in Spain. But he came home to open a gallery in his own house, which was wrecked by a fire in 1983. Isherwood died of cancer in 1989.