Meet the 73-year-old cleaning London’s gallery windows
6 min read
For nearly three decades, Francis Lobo has been the go-to window cleaner for art galleries in London’s west end. Plaster met up with him at Pilar Corrias to find out why, and what he’s learned about the art world
Francis Lobo’s day begins around 1.30 am, when he goes for a run, about a kilometre, before taking a cold shower. It’s good for the immune system, he says, which is important when you’re 73. He has a bowl of porridge, proper Scottish porridge, not the rubbish you buy in the shops. And then he catches a number of buses – the 614 and the 113 – from Hatfield in Hertfordshire to central London to clean gallery windows from Fitzrovia to Mayfair. If you run a gallery and you want clean windows, you call Francis.
Francis is the window cleaner of 17 central London galleries (Pace, Pilar Corrias, Edel Assanti, Maximilian William, Massimodicarlo…) and has been making the same journey for nearly 40 years. Until earlier this year, he used to do 27 different galleries, working six days a week but he had to cut back after suffering a bout of cancer. He’s just coming to the end of his chemo.
I first heard about Francis the same way most of his clients do, through word of mouth. The idea that there was one man working behind, or in front of, the scenes, cleaning all of these gallery windows seemed unusual, improbable even, so I went looking for him. He wasn’t too difficult to find, I asked a few galleries if they knew him and they gladly passed on his number. The only instruction was to ring, not text, as he can’t stand reading texts.
I joined Francis at 10 am on the corner of Conduit Street and Savile Row, outside Pilar Corrias’ new space (Francis has worked for Pilar for 17 years now). This was Francis’ last site of the day. He prefers to work in the early morning, which in winter means long before sunrise, because there are fewer people around to get in his way. He’ll carry on until 2 pm, when he heads home. In that time, he can get through two, three or four galleries.
It’s December, and bitterly cold. Francis says he prefers working in the winter because you can wrap up warm and you don’t build up a sweat and his mixture of Fairy washing-up liquid, degreaser and hot water doesn’t dry as quick as it would on a hot window – crucial for preventing streaks.
Francis wasn’t always a window cleaner. He trained as a tailor in Leeds and worked in house at a few different menswear companies before the bespoke industry collapsed in the 1980s and ready-to-wear suits came on the market. His neighbour at the time worked as a window cleaner, and took him under his wing. Francis learned how to do things properly. Again and again he emphasises the importance of doing things the right way. I have the impression that his eye for detail and doing things the “right way” comes from his background in tailoring. Wherever it does, the results speak for themselves.
Francis reckons there are only four or five other guys like himself working the old way, with a bucket and a pole. The newer companies use pressure washers. They get the job done but, in Francis’ view, with no care for the final result. He points out a few other businesses down the street and picks out the almost imperceptible streaks across the glass. Once it’s rained a few times, they’ll show up again. It’s a false economy.
He used to work on shops and offices too, and he still does a few, but prefers art galleries. People who work in art galleries are polite and friendly in a way that office workers aren’t, he says. You can’t have a laugh with them, and they’ll offer you a cup of tea. He puts it down to the nature of the job, when you’re making deals face to face, you have to have a certain charm. He doesn’t have anything of an artistic background. His first gallery job, for Annely Juda, was simply a well-paid job. But his name got passed around, he gained more clients, and after some time working on galleries, he became interested in what was going on. The best advice he was given was to ask questions: talk to the artists about their methods, learn from them and from the sellers. He found that artists were approachable in a way he never thought possible.
There’s a strange parallel between Francis’ work on the windows and the artwork just on the other side of the glass. He moves his squeegee and soap suds with the same smoothness as paint on canvas. He looks at glass like a critic looks at a painting. He laughs when I ask if he’d call himself an artist, but he admits that there is technique and skill and a certain art to his work.
