In 1956, the Tate gallery launched a public appeal to buy a set of four abstract bronze sculptures of the backs of naked women, by the French artist Henri Matisse, and received in response a handwritten note in rather blotty blue ink, sent from the Elms, at Mottram in Longdendale, offering a donation.
It was from LS Lowry, famous for his northern industrial landscapes and matchstick men. The Elms was the drab house in Greater Manchester, given listed building status three years ago, where Lowry lived and worked for 28 years until his death in 1976.
The letter turned up again in the Tate archives, in the research for a major exhibition on Matisse, which opens on Friday at Tate Liverpool.
The curator Stephanie Straine said it was a fascinating find. The sculptures it helped buy will be in the exhibition, along with works covering a half-century of Matisse’s work, including his famous giant cut-paper work the Snail – now very fragile, and being shown for the first time in the UK outside its home at Tate Britain.
The sculptures, made from 1909 to 1930, were Matisse’s largest sculptures. The set was only cast in bronze from his clay maquettes a year after he died in 1954, and the Tate appealed to art lovers to help acquire them for the nation.
Straine said: “I hope the public will visit the gallery knowing that when they are looking at these works by Matisse, it is in part due to the generosity of one of the north-west’s most famous artists.”
• This article was amended on 16 November 2015. An earlier version said the Lowry letter would be on display in the Matisse exhibition. That is not the case.
