Lowry's Lancashire Fair Returns to Downing Street Under Andy Burnham
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham has picked L.S. Lowry's painting Lancashire Fair, Good Friday, Daisy Nook for display at 10 Downing Street, the London home and office of the prime minister. The Art Newspaper reported the choice on 23 October 2026.
Lowry finished the picture in 1946. It shows an Easter fair in Daisy Nook, a village in Lancashire, in north-west England. The fair is run by Silcock Brothers, a funfair company that the Government Art Collection said in its 2008-2009 annual report was still in business.
The painting belongs to the Government Art Collection, which looks after more than 15,000 works. Those works hang in UK government buildings or travel abroad on loan. The collection calls itself the most dispersed collection of British art in the world, meaning its pieces are spread across many places.
Lancashire Fair has hung in Downing Street for 40 of the past 60 years. Harold Wilson was the first prime minister to choose it, for his private office. Every prime minister from Wilson to Keir Starmer has displayed it, with one exception: Tony Blair. Margaret Thatcher kept it in her private office after she took office.
Lowry and the prime minister's office also crossed paths in other ways. Wilson offered Lowry a knighthood in 1968, and Lowry turned it down. Wilson later used another Lowry, The Pond, on his first Christmas card from Number Ten, sent in 1964. The Pond is now part of a Lowry retrospective at the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, a city north-west of London.
The retrospective opens tomorrow, 24 October. Lancashire Fair will be part of the show before it goes back to No. 10. Burnham has asked for the painting to return to Downing Street when the exhibition closes in February 2027.
The show also includes two works that have not been seen in public for more than 70 years: Beach Scene, Lancashire (1947) and A Football Match (1932). For visitors, that makes the retrospective a rare chance to see pictures that have been out of view since before most of today's visitors were born.
The Art Newspaper's story is illustrated with a photograph of Larry the Cat sitting in front of the Lowry painting. Larry is a long-standing resident of Downing Street, and the picture shows that the painting has a place in the building's everyday life as well as its official displays.
