After turning down a knighthood in 1968 and several other royal appointments before that, iconic Salford artist LS Lowry is said to have told a reporter that he saw very little point in accepting any honours now that his mother was no longer alive to see it all happen.

 In his debut feature Mrs Lowry and Son, acclaimed theatrical director Adrian Noble (A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Importance of Being Earnest) focuses on the co-dependent relationship between Lowry (Timothy Spall) and his overbearing mother Elizabeth (a magnificent Vanessa Redgrave) as the artist is on the verge of popular success.

We first meet Lowry in 1936. After years of working as a rent collector to pay off his dead father’s debts, the artist has had very little life outside of painting for pleasure, and tending to his mother Elizabeth, a tyrannical matriarch who has been bed-ridden for some time.

When he receives a letter from a London gallery-owner expressing interest in his work, an already middle-aged Lowry is at first hesitant to tell Elizabeth. Having endured years of criticism and accusations of lowering her middle-class status by choosing to paint working class scenes, the artist is caught between his desire for success and wanting to keep the peace at home.

Noble offers a flawed yet deeply moving account of a relationship which had a deep and lasting effect on Lowry’s artistic trajectory. Opting for a magical realist approach in his depiction of  the artist’s quotidian chores, the director has benefited greatly from his own theatre background to offer a production which, whilst being undeniably stagey, still manages to tell a hugely engaging story.

Elevated by Martyn Hesford's beautifully crafted screenplay, Mrs Lowry and Son is crammed with hilarious one-liners, mostly courtesy of Redgrave who gives one of her finest performances in recent years.

Managing to convey Lowry’s total subservience to Elizabeth’s outlandish demands as well as his desire for assertiveness, Spall does a great job in depicting a character whose interior life remained a mystery for many years.

This is a slightly uneven, yet beautifully observed, moving and expertly acted biopic which acts as a fitting tribute to one of the greatest and most enigmatic British artists of the twentieth century.