Arthur Delaney

(1927 – 1987)

Arthur Delaney was born on 9th December 1927, the son of Genevieve Delaney, a music hall artiste, a dancer, who performed with her sister Mary Kelshaw as ‘Delaney and Lee’. Their mother’s second husband was a James Delaney, Arthur’s grandfather.

Arthur was born in what was Chorlton-on-Medlock, an inner city area of Manchester, off Oxford Road, a relatively poor area of the city in the late 1920’s. At the age of thirteen Arthur joined a textile design studio in Manchester, at that time still the centre of the textile manufacturing world.

He remained there for 32 years by which time Manchester’s textile industry was in terminal decline.

Delaney married his childhood sweetheart, Joan Campion, and they had 4 children. He took up painting as a form of relaxation, taking as his subject the city of his youth.

Clearly L.S. Lowry (1887-1976) was a significant influence though Delaney’s works demonstrated a certain optimism in their subject and palette. The memories of his happy years spent as a boy in Manchester of the 1930s with its smoke-laden skies, rattling tramcars and gas lamps. He set out to capture the atmosphere of the nostalgia of the period

Lowry’s work made him aware of the many special qualities of the North and soon he began producing street scenes and industrial landscapes.

In April 1974, following his retirement, Delaney had a very successful one-man show at the Tib Lane Gallery, Manchester with all his paintings selling within half an hour at the preview. His paintings continued to sell well during his lifetime and he exhibited at the Royal Academy.

Many of his paintings were reproduced as limited edition prints contributing to Delaney’s widespread popularity.

Delaney died in his native city of Manchester 17th April 1987.