Winter in Pendlebury, Manchester 1943
Oil on Panel
42.2 x 22.8 cm
Swindon Art Gallery
Swindon Art Gallery
Friday 19 July 2013
1960 - In Pendlebury
In Pendlebury 1960
Oil on Canvas
16 x 10 in. (40.6 x 25.4 cm.)
Sold [08 June 2007] for £204,000 (Christie's, London, King Street)
Signed and Dated 'L.S. LOWRY 1960' (lower left) and inscribed 'IN PENDLEBURY' (on the canvas overlap)
Provenance
with Lefevre Gallery, London, where purchased by the present owner in March 1989.
Exhibited
Sunderland, Art Gallery, on loan from 1990-2006.
In May 1909 Lowry and his family moved from Manchester's affluent Victoria Park to 117 Station Road, Pendlebury to a four-bedroomed, four-storey Victorian semi-detached villa in the countryside beyond the city. The move was necessitated to save money and the family was depressed by the loss of their social status. Here Elizabeth Lowry, the artist's mother began to gradually withdraw from society into the bed-ridden invalid that she would become, eventually requiring her long-suffering son to nurse her day and night.
Lowry later acknowledged the move to Pendlebury as the source of his artistic inspiration, 'I had lived in the residential side of Manchester - a very nice residential side - and then I went to live in Pendlebury - one of the most industrial villages in the countryside mid-way between Manchester and Bolton. At first I detested it. And then, after a few years, I got pretty interested in it and began to walk about. Vaguely in my mind I suppose pictures were forming, and then for about thirty odd years after I did nothing but industrial pictures. That is how it all happened. I wasn't brought up to it' (see S. Rohde, L.S. Lowry A Biography, Salford, 1999, pp.81-6).
The present work shows St Mary's Church, later demolished in 1964, and the Albion Mill that stood opposite.
1954 - Whitehaven
Whitehaven 1954
Oil on Canvas
20 x 30 in. (50.8 x 76.2 cm.)
Sold [08 June 2007] for £180,000 (Christie's,London, King Street)
Signed and Dated 'L.S. Lowry 1954' (lower right)
Provenance
with Crane Kalman, London.
J. Millburn, December 1988.
with Crane Kalman, London.
Exhibited
probably London, Lefevre Gallery, L.S. Lowry, March - April 1956, no. 26, as 'Near Whitehaven'.
probably London, Royal Academy, L.S. Lowry R.A. 1887-1976, September - November 1976, no. 207, as 'Near Whitehaven'.
In this view of Whitehaven, Lowry has chosen to address the industrial element of the town, juxtaposing the factory chimneys with the coast. The Georgian town of Whitehaven was built around the shipping and mining industries, and some of the coal mines extended several miles beneath the sea bed.
To heighten the contrast between the natural and the man-made, Lowry has used visual distinctions inWhitehaven. The factory chimneys are tall and thin, strong verticals that are echoed in the verticals of the flag-pole to the right and in the houses and church in the background. Lowry also paints the sea wall with strong black outlines, placing emphasis on the straight line of the man-made constructions. This contrasts with the loose and thick brush-strokes that he uses to describe the sea and the heavy waves. It is as if the sea cannot be contained through the confines of paint. He also makes a distinction between the sweeping curve of the coast line and the hard right-angles of the industrial buildings.
The palette in Whitehaven is very subdued, and the black and white tones are interspersed only occasionally with red, including in the signature and date. The sea is treated with heavy black sweeps of the brush, suggesting rising and falling waves, and brings to mind Lowry's words, 'It's the Battle of Life - the turbulence of the sea - and life's pretty turbulent isn't it? I am very fond of the sea, of course, I have been fond of the sea all my life: how wonderful it is, yet how horrible it is. But I often think ... what if it suddenly changed its mind and didn't turn the tide? And came straight on? If it didn't stop and came on and on and on and on ... that would be the end of it all' (see J. Spalding, exhibition catalogue, Lowry, Middlesbrough, Cleveland Art Gallery, 1987, p. 61).
Thursday 18 July 2013
1967 - Waiting for the Tide, South Shields
Waiting for the Tide, South Shields 1967
Oil on Canvas
15.1 x 30.5 cm
The L.S. Lowry Collection
The L.S. Lowry Collection
1943 - Waiting for the Shop to Open
Waiting for the Shop to Open 1943
Oil on Canvas
43.3 x 53.3 cm
Manchester City Galleries
Manchester City Galleries
An everyday street scene in front of a greengrocer's 'fish and fruit' shop in wartime Britain. A line of customers wait patiently for the shop to open.
In the background there is an abstract, industrial scene representing houses and factories with smoking chimneys. During this time of shortages, scenes of waiting in queues were common. The shop number is the same as Lowry's house, representing one of Lowry's gestures of light humour.
1959 - View of Deptford Power Station from Greenwich
View of Deptford Power Station from Greenwich 1959
Oil on Canvas
50.8 x 76.2 cm
National Maritime Museum
National Maritime Museum
1936 - View of a Town
View of a Town 1936
Oil on Canvas
40.6 x 50.8 cm
The Collection: Art & Archaeology in Lincolnshire (Usher Gallery)
The Collection: Art & Archaeology in Lincolnshire (Usher Gallery)
Unknown - Two Figures
Two Figures Unknown
Oil on Board
15.7 x 10.8 cm
Kirklees Museums and Galleries
1947 - The Tollbooth, Glasgow
The Tollbooth, Glasgow 1947
Oil on Canvas
55 x 45.5 cm
The Hepworth Wakefield
The Hepworth Wakefield
1944 - The Mansion, Pendlebury
The Mansion, Pendlebury 1944
Oil on Canvas
16½ x 20½ in. (42 x 52 cm.)
Sold [08 June 2007] for £344,800 (Christies, London, King Street)
Signed and Dated 'L.S. Lowry 1944' (lower left)
Provenance
with Crane Kalman, London.
Jack Dellal, April 1982.
Henry and Maurice Laniado.
with Lefevre Gallery, London.
with Crane Kalman, London.
Literature
Exhibition catalogue, L.S. Lowry A Selection of 36 Paintings, London, Crane Kalman, 1975, no. 16, illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue, L.S. Lowry R.A. 1887-1976, London, Royal Academy, 1976, pp. 24, 71, illustrated.
Exhibited
London, Crane Kalman, L.S. Lowry A Selection of 36 Paintings, November-December 1975, no. 16.
London, Royal Academy, L.S. Lowry R.A. 1887-1976, September - November 1976, no. 155.
Edinburgh, Scottish Arts Council Gallery, L.S. Lowry, December 1977 - January 1978, no. 34: this exhibition travelled to Hawick, Wilton Lodge Museum, January - February 1978; Aberdeen, Art Gallery, February - March 1978; Dundee, Museum and Art Gallery, March - April 1978; Inverness, Museum and Art Gallery, April - May 1978; and Perth, Museum and Art Gallery, May - June 1978.
In 1909 Lowry's family moved to 117 Station Road, Pendlebury, which is situated between Manchester and Bolton, and was to become his home for nearly forty years. This move from the residential side of Manchester to an industrial suburb made a big impression on the 22 year old Lowry: 'At first I didn't like it at all. It took me six years. Then I got used to it; after that, interested. I wanted to depict it. I couldn't recollect that anyone else had ever done it before. Finally I became obsessed by it, and I did nothing else for 30 years' (see M. Leber and J. Spalding (eds.), exhibition catalogue, L.S. Lowry, Salford Art Gallery, 1987, p. 68).
Painted in 1944, The Mansion, Pendlebury, depicts a group of figures gathered around the doorway of an imposing building, within a partly rural setting: a slightly ramshackle fence crosses the foreground of the painting and a brood of chickens are shown scratching the ground by a gate. In front of the house, stands a horse and cart, with a woman in a bonnet seated inside and a man in a top hat, leaning on a cane is depicted in the doorway of the house.
The large house, which dominates the painting, is reminiscent of other solitary buildings that appear regularly in Lowry's work. These buildings convey Lowry's continued fascination with the subject matter of loneliness and isolation. In his early monograph on Lowry, Maurice Collis commented on the anthropomophic qualities evident in these houses: 'It is possible to carry this identification of his subjects with himself by looking more closely at his houses. The windows are sometimes like his eyes, sometimes like his whole face as it would be represented in an abstract style. The half human houses watch the scene with mournful detatchment. This variation of the theme of the solitary, where Lowry is not only the figure in a scene but becomes a presence watching it, is suggested at times by the composition alone. For instance, it is a common thing to find a barrier in the foreground of his pictures - railings, posts, or the like - as if he were looking on from behind a barrier, which he could not pass' (see The Discovery of L.S. Lowry, London, 1951, p. 22).
These ideas of loneliness and isolation are reinforced by the strange group of people that have gathered around the doorway of the house in the present painting. The reasons why groups of people are drawn together fascinated Lowry: 'Accidents interest me - I've a very queer mind you know. What fascinates me is the people they attract, the patterns those people form, and the atmosphere of tension when something has happened ... Where there's a quarrel there's always a crowd ... It's a great draw. A quarrel or a body' (see J. Spalding, exhibition catalogue, Lowry, Middlesbrough, Cleveland Art Gallery, 1987, p. 53).
1947 - Factories, Lancashire
Factories, Lancashire 1947
Oil on Canvas
20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm.)
Sold [June 2007] for £1,128,800 (Christies, London, King Street)
Signed and Dated 'L.S. Lowry 1947' (lower right)
Provenance
with Lefevre Gallery, London.
with Crane Kalman, London, October 1983.
Exhibited
London, Lefevre Gallery, Paintings by Barbara Hepworth; paintings by L.S. Lowry, April 1948, no. 5
Paris, Musée des Beaux Arts, 48 Salon, 1950, catalogue not traced.
London, Lefevre Gallery, L.S. Lowry, March 1951, no. 39.
Painted in 1947, the present work is a composite industrial landscape in which Lowry has combined different elements together to create an extensive urban scene, filled with figures and houses against a background of factories with trademark smoking chimneys. One of the buildings included in the background is based on the Acme Spinning Mill, opened in 1905, which Lowry claimed was the original reason he became interested in the industrial scene.
One day, when Lowry had missed a train from Pendlebury the mill caught his attention:'... as I got to the top of the station steps I saw the Acme Spinning Company's mill, the huge black framework of rows of yellow-lit windows stood up against the sad, damp-charged afternoon sky. The mill was turning out hundreds of little pinched, black figures, heads bent down, as though to offer the smallest surface to the swirling particles of sodden grit, were hurrying across the asphalt, along the mean streets with the inexplicable derelict gaps in the rows of houses, past the telegraph poles, homewards to high tea or pubwards, away from the mill and without a backward glace. I watched this scene - which I'd looked at many times without seeing - with rapture' (see J. Sandling and M. Leber (eds.), Lowry's City: A Painter and his Locale, Salford, 2000, p. 17).
The foreground of Factories, Lancashire is predominately a street scene filled with figures, seemingly more occupied with domestic business than trudging to and from their work place. The elevated viewpoint of the painting does, however, give the figures a diminutive feel and Lowry shows them living their lives within the context of the industrial buildings and smoking chimneys that dominate the background of the painting.
Typical of Lowry's work the figures and buildings are painted over an initial ground of flake white paint. Lowry commented, 'When I started painting industrial scenes fifty years ago I painted them very dark. But when I showed them to Bernard Taylor, who was then art critic of the Manchester Guardian, he said: 'Now put them up against the wall', and of course they both looked equally black. I was very cross with him. Then I started painting crowds against a practically white ground, and he said, 'That's right, and you've lost nothing in quality'. And I had to agree with him' (see M. Leber and J. Sandling (eds.), exhibition catalogue, L.S. Lowry, Salford Art Gallery, 1987, pp. 75-6).
1946 - Good Friday, Daisy Nook
Good Friday, Daisy Nook 1946
Oil on Canvas
30 x 40 in. (76.2 x 101.6 cm.)
Sold [June 2007] for £3,772,000 (Christies, London, King Street)
Signed and Dated 'L.S.Lowry 1946' (lower left)
Provenance
Dr A.W. Laing.
Property of Mrs M. Laing; Sotheby's, London, 8 July 1970, lot 53 (£16,000, then the world auction record for the artist).
with Crane Kalman, London.
Henry and Maurice Laniado.
with Ronald Lyon, 1973.
with Crane Kalman, London.
Literature
M. Collis, The Discovery of L.S. Lowry, London, 1951, pl. 19, as 'Fun Fair'.
M. Levy, Painters of Today L.S. Lowry, London, 1961, pp. 13, 17, pl. 12.
Exhibition catalogue, L.S. Lowry, London, Sunderland Art Gallery, 1966, pp. 4, 14, illustrated.
M. Levy, The Paintings of L.S. Lowry, London, 1975, no. 19, illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue, L.S. Lowry A Selection of 36 Paintings, London, Crane Kalman, 1975, no. 20, illustrated on the front cover.
Exhibition catalogue, L.S. Lowry R.A. 1887-1976, London, Royal Academy, 1976, pp. 26, 72, illustrated.
A. Kalman and A. Lambirth, L.S. Lowry Conversation Pieces, London, 2003, p. 93, illustrated p. 92 and front cover.
Exhibited
Manchester, Academy of Fine Arts, L.S. Lowry, 1949, no. 195.
Manchester, Arts Council Gallery and City Art Gallery, British Painting 1925-50, 1951, no. 41.
Manchester, City Art Gallery, Retrospective Exhibition, June - July 1959, no. 44.
Manchester, Arts Council, City Art Gallery, Northern Artists, July - August 1960, no. 44: this exhibition travelled to Sheffield, Graves Art Gallery, August - September 1960; Newcastle Upon Tyne, Laing Art Gallery, September - October 1960; Bolton, Art Gallery, October 1960; Bradford, City Art Gallery, November 1960; and Carlisle, Public Library and Art Gallery, December 1960.
Sheffield, Graves Art Gallery, The Works of L.S. Lowry, September - October 1962, no. 42.
Sunderland, Arts Council, Sunderland Art Gallery, L.S. Lowry, August - September 1966, no. 50: this exhibition travelled to Manchester, Whitworth Art Gallery, September - October 1966; Bristol, City Art Gallery, October - November 1966; and London, Tate Gallery, November 1966 - January 1967.
London, Contemporary Art Society, January 1975, no. 94.
London, Crane Kalman, L.S. Lowry A Selection of 36 Paintings, November-December 1975, no. 20, illustrated on the front cover.
London, Royal Academy, L.S. Lowry R.A. 1887-1976, September - November 1976, no. 166. Edinburgh, Scottish Arts Council Gallery, L.S. Lowry, December 1977 - January 1978, no. 37: this exhibition travelled to Hawick, Wilton Lodge Museum, January - February 1978; Aberdeen, Art Gallery, February - March 1978; Dundee, Museum and Art Gallery, March - April 1978; Inverness, Museum and Art Gallery, April - May 1978; and Perth, Museum and Art Gallery, May - June 1978.
Kendal, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Paintings and Drawings of L.S. Lowry, July - September 1979, no. 10.
Manchester, Whitworth Art Gallery, 1979, on loan.
Salford, The Lowry, Conversation Pieces, July - October 2003, catalogue not numbered.
A FOREWORD BY SHELLEY ROHDE
The June 2007 sale of a collection of six of Lowry's finest paintings is said to be one of the most important sales of his works for many decades.
Of course it is.
It would be hard to think of a posthumous Lowry sale that has not been so described.
Each one, it would seem, betters the last.
This is not in any way to deny the truth of such an assessment, not to accuse the writers of catalogue notes of salesman-like hyperbole, simply to acknowledge the originality, not to mention the diversity, of Lowry's work. It would seem that the very quality - the unique nature of Lowry's vision, his individual view of life - that was initially responsible for the inability of the art world of the time to recognise his worth, is the same quality that today makes each new collection that comes to market an event to be hailed with delight.
There is, of course, always good reason for greeting each new auction of Lowry paintings with enthusiasm. It might be a private collection long unseen on public view - such as that of the late Reverend Geoffrey Bennett; it might be one acquired by someone with a fine eye and a rare understanding of the man - such as that of the late Monty Bloom, possibly the most addictive of Lowry's collectors. It might be a special commission for a special buyer - such as Piccadilly Gardens which achieved the first of the record sale prices; it might even be one with a particular appeal for a particular public - such as Going to the Match, a Lowry-eye view of football fans streaming into Bolton Wanderers' stadium and bought for a record price of nearly two million pounds by the Professional Football Players Association whose Chief Executive had once played for that very team.
Or it could be the re-appearance of a truly iconic Lowry work - such as Good Friday, Daisy Nook (lot 114).
The keystone of this June sale of works acquired over the years by a discerning private collector, is not a painting of extraordinary humanity; it captures the spirit of a long gone age - Lowry's age.
Lowry in the forties was a man emerging from a debilitating period of mourning for his mother, a man beginning to discover himself and the heady freedom to follow his art wherever it might lead. Given such circumstances it was hardly surprising that it led to Lowry's most fruitful and imaginative work. No longer was he repressed by the demands of a dying woman, whom he nursed, without complaint, for the eight years she lay 'bedfast' at their home on Station Road, Pendlebury. No longer was he restrained by the petty criticism of the art establishment or the open laughter of his peers; now in his fifties, he had learned to disguise any hurt he might have felt by the simple expedient of assumed insouciance. He was the first to belittle the quality of his art (No, I don't think much of it myself - my brother, Fred, did it!) or to refute any importance it might have in his life (No, I never particularly wanted to be an artist; I was fit for nothing else).
There is no market in decrying a man who first decries himself.
He still had his job as a rent collector, of course; he not only needed that for financial security (it was to be many years yet - sometime after his retirement on a pension from the Pall Mall Property Company - before he could have supported himself by his art alone) but, more importantly, it fed his marvellous eye with the raw material of his unique vision.
All this, and more, is somehow implicit in the exuberant Easter scene of post-war Britain at play: Good Friday, Daisy Nook; and, indeed, in Beach and Promenade, painted two years later in much the same spirit.
At this time the Manchester Academy of Art had acquired premises at 10 Acomb Street where members were encouraged to drop in after Saturday afternoon life class for gentle guidance and a cup of tea. It was here that Lowry met Hugh Maitland, a Canadian who had been Professor of Bacteriology at Manchester University since 1910. He was an enthusiastic amateur artist (with none of Lowry's reservations about describing himself as such) and, in time, became so intrigued by his unusual new friend that he began a Lowry biography; he died before the project could be completed.
It was Maitland who first introduced Lowry to a man who was to become one of his earliest and most enthusiastic collectors, a man whose arrival in Lowry's life was to acquire a particular place in the artist's own telling of his personal history. In short Alec Laing became one of the first, if not the first, buyer to be awarded the accolade: Just as I was on the point of giving it all up, someone came along to keep me going ... It seemed like fate.
Laing was a General Practitioner of private means who may well have lived in a house much like The Mansion, Pendlebury (lot 117); it was certainly his style. He was already something of a modest art collector: a couple of Constables in the dining room, a Whistler in the bedroom, a Boudin in the living-room - all of which only increased Lowry's delight when, on a visit to Station Road, the good Doctor bought, without haggling or hesitation, three Lowry industrial works.
No one has ever liked them before, said Lowry and promptly declared Laing to be the hand of fate personified - a role later awarded to Monty Bloom for his affection for the grotesques and to Geoffrey Bennett for his purchase of the early line drawings (Just as I was going to put them on the bonfire).
It will come as no surprise to anyone even remotely familiar with the life and times, quite apart from the works, of Laurence Stephen Lowry, to learn that Alec Laing was something of an eccentric. Lowry was attracted to such people; he relished them. He not only enjoyed their company but collected tales of their doings with which to regale the more conventional of his acquaintances - not that there were many such Lowry's circle. It was as if the presence in his life of such free spirits gave Lowry, himself, the freedom to be as quirky as he might wish, without the danger of being set apart by his occasionally bizarre behaviour.
Laing was not only an eccentric but also an avowed atheist who displayed his disbelief with as much fervour as a convert displays his faith. He called his mongrel dog 'Jesus' and delighted in shocking the inmates of Ashton Infirmary where he was honorary pathologist, by stalking the grounds of an evening declaiming loudly, 'Jesus come here,' of even 'Jesus, heel!' Letters to Lowry invariably ended with the instruction: 'Trust in the Lord - and starve!'
He was an accomplished musician, although he refused to play his violin anywhere except the bathroom where he would perch on the edge of the bath and declare the acoustics to be better than anywhere else in the house. On visits to the Free Trade Hall to hear the Hallé the pair would pass happy moments, heads together like naughty schoolboys, speculating on the relationship of various members of the orchestra.
Laing, for his part, enjoyed the friendship and took Lowry to a variety of places in and around Manchester which they decided together might make a fine subject for a painting; thus did Good Friday ... come into being. Lowry became a regular visitor to Laing's canal side home where he would arrive for tea with a couple of his pictures, much as an uncle takes a favourite nephew on an outing. 'He liked to give them an airing, to see them in different surroundings,' said Maitland.
For me, as one of Lowry's biographers (in all probability one of the most intemperate of admirers in the land of intemperate admirers) the source of this year's particular interest is the sight, in the flesh so to speak, of Good Friday ... In more than thirty years researching the life and times of Mr. Lowry, I have had cause to refer and to examine reproductions of this painting on many occasions - but never, not even at the 1970 sale where the painting achieved a then record price of £16,000 for the artist, have I seen other than a print or a reproduction.
I am told that Lowry, himself, was at that sale. It seems that he was in London to take one of his fine collection of antique clocks for repair in Bond Street and, reluctant to leave it overnight, filled in the waiting time at the auction. He appeared delighted when the painting went for what at the time seemed an astonishing price. When asked for his reaction, he grinned and (paraphrasing Degas) said that he felt like 'the horse must feel when the jockey gets the prize.' He was, of course, only joking. This was no more than Lowry finding a neat phrase to fit the occasion; he was, as one critic remarked, 'God's gift to the journalists' or what today would be called; a master of the sound bite.
His more usual response to a request for a reaction to someone making money out of a work for which he had received only a modest fee was much more in character:
I am always delighted when someone who has shown faith in me when no one else did, makes a bit of money. After all, they bought when no one else bought - and people often thought them mad for doing so.
No danger of anyone being thought mad for bidding today.
Notes
Lowry painted Good Friday, Daisy Nook, in 1946 and the densely populated canvas is testament to Lowry's skill as a painter. The large-scale canvas, packed with a multitude of figures, depicts the Lancashire fair held annually at Daisy Nook. At the time that Lowry painted the scene there were only two statutory holidays for mill workers, Christmas Day and Good Friday. The Easter fair at Daisy Nook, situated between Droylsden and Failsworth, near Manchester, is still held annually and run by the Silcock family, whose name appears in the painting. It provided a huge variety of entertainment for the crowds that congregated there.
The name 'Daisy Nook' was coined from a book written by Benjamin Brierly in 1855. He had asked his friend, Charles Potter, an Oldham artist, to draw an imaginary place called Daisy Nook. Potter's drawing was based on the village of Waterhouses and this rural spot on the River Medlock and from then on the area was known as Daisy Nook.
Although there is an industrial chimney, just visible on the horizon, the overall mood of the painting is one of holiday and post-war optimism: a multitude of colourful figures throng the painting, children are clutching newly-bought whirligigs and flags and groups of people crowd round the striped fairground tents and queue for the rides on offer, including the 'Silcock Bros Thriller', visible in the work.
Although there are a group of works that Lowry painted in the 1940s and early 1950s, depicting beach scenes (see lot 115) and bank holidays, he claimed that he, 'only deal[t] with poverty. Always with gloom. You'll never see a joyous picture of mine. I never do a jolly picture. You never see the sun in my work. That's because I can't paint shadow'.
Michael Howard points out that Lowry's figures never seem to escape the industrialisation that surrounds them in their working lives: 'Lowry's reduction of his living figures to the role of automata suggests a lot about his own private impulses; at the same time his puppets offer a well-worn but effective metaphor for the de-humanising effects of the industrial process. His doll-like forms, his stage-like settings, the very artifice of his artistic practice and his calculated distance as the maker of these images are the very reasons surely that Lowry's canvases are so powerful and evocative of the factory worker's lot. Even outside their working hours, Lowry seems to say, on their way to or from the mill, they cannot escape the industrial system which during their working hours controls their bodies and restricts their freedom of mind. Like a latter-day Doctor Caligari, he deploys their bodies and gives them only a limited range of expressive gestures, as though working in the mill has imposed restricted movement on them, reducing their ability to express themselves except by the most minimal of means' (see M. Howard, Lowry: A Visionary Artist, Salford, 2000, pp. 135-6).
Lowry painted a small group of works and executed a number of drawings depicting the Easter fair at Daisy Nook, including one currently in the Government Art Collection (fig.1). The present work is the major version and was chosen to be included in the 1978 Royal Academy exhibition. In the Daisy Nook paintings some groupings of figures and individuals recur. In all of them there is a sense of the ebb and flow of people that Lowry was very conscious of in his depictions of factory workers and industrial street scenes. The viewer's eye follows the movement inherent in this mass gathering of people, at times stopping on a single figure or small group, as if Lowry had punctuated the painting like sentences in a paragraph.
The composition of the work is typical: 'As with his industrial paintings, the crowd fills the foreground and the activities, both planned and unplanned, seem infinite. Everywhere one looks, something is going on. The tents and caravans form a thin line between foreground and background and act as a boundary to the scene. There are few rural scenes which Lowry could depict as he did his industrial ones, other than the great fairs. In this case, there is no doubt that Lowry was accurate in his rendition, particularly of that lonely chimney and building standing on the hill. When out bicycling near Daisy Nook, an aquaintance of Mr Lowry saw the artist and asked him what he was doing. Lowry had explained that 'he was doing a painting and had forgotten the outline of the background. He took out of his pocket an envelope on the back of which he had drawn the pump house and tall chimney'' (see J. Sandling and M. Leber, Lowry's City: A Painter and his Locale, Salford, 2000, p. 89).
1948 - Beach and Promenade
Beach and Promenade 1948
Oil on Canvas
25 x 30 in. (63.5 x 76.2 cm.)
Sold [June 2007] for £546,400 (Christies, London, King Street)
Signed and Dated 'L.S. Lowry 1948' (lower right)
Provenance
Jack Dellal.
with Crane Kalman, London.
Literature
Exhibition catalogue, A Tribute to L.S. Lowry, London, Crane Kalman, 1966, pl. IX.
Exhibited
possibly London, Lefevre Gallery, L.S. Lowry, October 1958, no. 3, as 'On the Promenade'.
London, Crane Kalman, A Tribute to L.S. Lowry, November 1966 - January 1967, no. 19.
London, Crane Kalman, L.S. Lowry: A Selection of Masterpieces, December 1994, catalogue not traced.
Painted in 1948, Beach and Promenade is a scene of post-war Britain, in which Lowry's figures are seen to be relaxed and carefree. Lowry was fascinated both by the sea and by our relationship with it, and in the present work, he expresses the sense of freedom and pleasure that the sea and beach provided.
Lowry's bright palette conveys a sense of energy and optimism. The red house and colourful swimming costumes of the bathers suggest the relaxed nature of the scene, which is enhanced by the boats bobbing on the surface of the water. He suggests a warmth and fondness when painting this beach scene, which is particularly evident in the figures of the children in the foreground. Lowry's own childhood was touched with memories of the sea: he went on family holidays to Rhyl in North Wales and Lytham St Anne's on the Lancashire coast, and recalled that 'I used to draw little ships when I was eight' (see M. Howard, Lowry: A Visionary Artist, Salford, 2000, p. 226).
The viewpoint at which Lowry regards the scene is typical of his paintings: he places the viewer at a high perspective, looking down upon the scene. The figures in the foreground of the picture plane are standing facing out to see, paddling on the edge of the beach. By facing the sea, Lowry has them facing the viewer, as on a stage. The figures in the foreground of Beaches and Promenade share the same fascination with the open expanse of the sea as Lowry does. Michael Howard writes, 'The view of the edge of the land, out to sea, became an obsessive motif for Lowry, who also spent endless hours occupied in the same contemplative action' (op. cit.. p. 234).
Although the figures stand in groups on the beach, they are also alone. Those in the foreground take on a particular individuality, and the principal figure on the edge of the water, with dark hair and a dark costume, is centred directly beneath the façade of the pink house. There is a vulnerability and loneliness about this figure that characterises Lowry's work and which is reflected in his view of the sea: 'It's all there. It's all in the sea. The battle of life is there. And fate. And the inevitability of it all' (see J. Spalding, exhibition catalogue, Lowry, Middlesbrough, Cleveland Art Gallery, 1987, p. 17).
Wednesday 17 July 2013
1956 - Mill Scene
Mill Scene 1956
Pencil, Pastel, Crayon and Watercolour
9½ x 13½ in. (24.2 x 34.3 cm.)
Sold [June 2007] for £54,000 (Christies, London, King Street)
Signed and Dated 'L S Lowry 1956' (lower right), Signed again, Inscribed and Dated again 'Mill Scene/L S Lowry 1956' (on the reverse)
Provenance
Given to the previous owner by the artist in February 1975.
Literature
Exhibition catalogue, L.S. Lowry 1887-1976, London, Royal Academy, 1976, p. 82.
M. Levy, The Drawings of L.S. Lowry Public and Private, London, 1976, pl. IX, as 'Industrial Scene'.
Exhibited
London, Royal Academy, L.S. Lowry 1887-1976, September - November 1976, no. 222.
Mervyn Levy discusses this fluidly executed work, commenting on Lowry's representation of an ordinary street scene and its inhabitants, 'The mood is gently but pointedly satirical. The artist frequently concentrated his use of distortion upon the image of the dog. 'Man's best friend'? - these dogs are more like the hounds of hell. Invert the proposition and you have man in his true role. Lowry's symbolism was often complex and provocative' (M. Levy, loc. cit.).
1956 - Figures By Railings
Figures By Railings 1956
Pencil
14¾ x 10½ in. (37.5 x 26.8 cm.)
Sold [June 2007] for £31,200 (Christies, London, King Street)
Signed and Dated 'L.S. Lowry 1956' (lower right)
Provenance
Anonymous sale; Bonhams, Knightsbridge, 28 June 2001, lot 158.
Figure groups became a popular subject for Lowry's drawings in the 1950s. Mervyn Levy comments (Drawings of L.S. Lowry, London, 1963, p. 22), 'In any town or city you will find men and women, everywhere, who are as incredible in appearance as the most bizarre of Lowry's types. It is simply that, as in the figures of the man and woman, he has halted their incredibleness and pinned it securely upon the paper so that we can study it at leisure. It is of course an essence of the grotesque and the lonely, that he has distilled; but it is as essence we each of us carry through the world. If the fact hurts, it is only life that hurts. It is better to laugh'.
1924 - The Park
The Park 1924
Oil on Panel
31 x 53.3 cm
Sold [June 2007] for £216,000 [Christies, London, King Street]
Signed and Dated 'L.S.LOWRY 1924' (lower left) and inscribed 'A Park' (on a label attached to the backboard)
Provenance
with Lefevre Gallery, London.
Ian Dalrymple.
with Agnews, London, where purchased by the previous owner.
Exhibited
Salford, City Art Gallery, L.S. Lowry Retrospective Exhibition, July - August 1951, no. 42.
Manchester, City Art Gallery, L.S. Lowry Retrospective Exhibition, June - July 1959, no. 13.
Sunderland, Arts Council, Sunderland Art Gallery, L.S.Lowry, August - September 1966, no. 11: this exhibition toured to Manchester, Whitworth Art Gallery, September - October 1966; Bristol, City Art Gallery, October - November 1966; and London, Tate Gallery, November 1966 - January 1967.
Lowry found much to interest him in the urban park and he produced many paintings of the subject. In the present view groups of people congregate in the open space of the composition. Lowry contains them in two linear planes, kept distinct from one another by the broad strips of grass and a line of fencing. The path in the direct centre could be read as a means of escape, yet ironically, as it leads past an impromptu game of football on the left-hand side of the picture, it heads to the ever-present industrial backdrop, as though to serve as a reminder of the narrow division between work and recreation.
Lowry famously only used five colours of paint: flake white and ivory black, with vermillion, Prussian blue and ochre. In this early landscape, painted whilst he was attending drawing and painting classes at Salford School of Art, he has blended the colours to create a creamy green hue which pervades the whole picture, picked out with tiny flashes of red. The sky has darkly threatening clouds encroaching from all sides. As Lowry's landscapes developed he used more and more white, resulting in skies which were predominantly white, building the layers up with impasto.
1957 - Street Scene
Street Scene 1957
Oil on Canvas
25.4 x 35.5 cm
Sold [June 2007] for £367,200 (Christies, King Street, London)
Signed and Dated 'LS LOWRY 1957' (lower left)
Provenance
with Lefevre Gallery, London.
Purchased by the previous owner's family in the 1980's.
The present work is from Lowry's extensive series of street scenes, from every decade of his output. The Acme Spinning Mill, the source of so much of his industrial painting, looms on the horizon, and the topography of the street is made up of Lowry's composite terraces, churches and factory chimneys. The groups of figures are very important in the composition, as Lowry remarked: 'An industrial set without people is an empty shell. A street is not a street without people, it is as dead as mutton. It had to be a combination of the two - the mills and the people' (see J. Sandling and M. Leber, Lowry's City: A Painter and his Locale, Salford, 2000, p. 17).
1964 - Steamer Off Promenade
Steamer Off Promenade 1964
Oil on Canvas
30.5 x 40.6 cm
Sold [June 2007] for £144,000 [Christies, King Street, London]
Signed and Dated 'L.S. LOWRY 1964' (lower left)
Provenance
with Lefevre Gallery, London, where purchased by the previous owner's mother in 1969.
Literature
Exhibition catalogue, L.S. Lowry, London, Sunderland Art Gallery, 1966, p. 18, pl. 31.
Exhibited
Sunderland, Arts Council, Sunderland Art Gallery, L.S. Lowry, August - September 1966, no. 104: this exhibition travelled to Manchester, Whitworth Art Gallery, September - October 1966; Bristol, City Art Gallery, October - November 1966; and London, Tate Gallery, November 1966 - January 1967.
London, Lefevre Gallery, L.S. Lowry, May 1967, no. 27.
The present work simply titled Steamer off Promenade was probably painted in Sunderland. Lowry discovered Sunderland in 1960 during a chance visit, and the town was to become a second home for him. It provided a retreat from the pressures of city life and also gave him new inspiration. As he said, 'One day I was travelling south from Tyneside and I realised that this was what I had always been looking for' (Sunderland Echo, 7 March 1975).
Always staying in the same room at the Seaburn Hotel on the sea front he could look directly out over the North Sea and the shipping which passed by on its way to and from the Wear and Tyne. He became a familiar figure taking regular walks along the promenade and drew and painted many works of the views.
The format of the present work is one used frequently by Lowry; the picture can be divided into three horizontal planes, each almost complete in its own right. The close foreground delineated by the iron railings of the promenade is peopled by Lowry's favourite characters: as opposed to the people in his urban and city landscapes these people are holiday-makers, strolling with their children and dogs by the seaside. The middle-ground is dominated by the black hulk of a steamer, seemingly at anchor. To the left of the picture is a trademark half-boat. The top half of the picture plane is a sky study with high grey clouds.
The present work was exhibited at the major retrospective exhibition held by the Arts Council at the Sunderland Gallery in 1966 and a very close drawing of the same subject Tanker entering the Tyne, dated 17 August 1965 (private collection) was exhibited in the exhibition, L.S. Lowry in the North East, Tyne and Wear Museum, July - Ocober 1989, no. 50.
1959 - Sunday in the Park, Manchester
Sunday in the Park, Manchester 1959
Oil on Canvas
14 x 10 in. (35.5 x 25.4 cm.)
Sold [June 2007] for £180,000 at Christie's [London, King Street]
Signed and Dated 'L S LOWRY 1959' (lower right)
Provenance
with Lefevre Gallery, London, where purchased by the previous owner's husband.
Exhibited
Cape Town, South African National Gallery, The Friends Collection, 1971, no. 50.
In Sunday in the Park, Manchester Lowry depicts people enjoying a Sunday stroll in the park. The subject matter of people within urban parks was a source of inspiration for a number of Lowry's paintings. As in The Park (see lot 111) Lowry has included an industrial background in the present work and the large factories and smoking chimneys are a reminder that the people depicted are unable to completely escape their working lives even during their leisure time.
The composition of the present work is arranged on receding horizontal planes which is a typical device used by Lowry. The painting is very similar in composition to another painting of the same date, Park scene, Manchester (private collection) and both paintings have a strip of grass and fence in the immediate foreground, rather than any figures. The two women seated back-to-back on the bench in Sunday in the Park, Manchester appear also in A Seat in the Park, 1952 (private collection). Although in the latter work there is a figure seated between them, they seem to express Lowry's constant fascination with how people could be physically close to each other but remain distinctly distant and alone.
Lowry commented to Mervyn Levy, 'All those people in my pictures, they are all alone, you know. They have all got their private sorrows, their own absorptions. But they can't contact one another. We are all of us alone - cut off. All my people are lonely. Crowds are the most lonely thing of all. Everyone is a stranger to everyone else. You have only got to look at them to see that' (see M. Howard, Lowry: A Visionary Artist, Salford, 2000, p. 133).
Unknown - The Viaduct
The Viaduct Unknown
36 x 24 cm
Provenance
The Lefevre Gallery London
Sir Alec Guinness
The Lowry Centre
1969 - Francis Terrace, Salford [LITHOGRAPH]
Francis Terrace, Salford 1969
Lithograph [Black and White]
47.5 x 61 cm
Sold [April 2006, 52/75] for £3,642 including premium
Sold [April 2007, 62/75] for £3,120 including premium
Signed in Pencil
Provenance
Originally purchased directly from Ganymead by Mr Meyerson, the senior Ganymead executive who worked with Lowry on the production of the series of lithographs.
Thence by descent to the current owner.
Tuesday 16 July 2013
1965 - The Sea at Sunderland
The Sea at Sunderland 1965
Oil on Braid
29 x 39 cm
Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens
Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens
1953 - The Procession Passing the Queen Victoria Memorial, Coronation
The Procession Passing the Queen Victoria Memorial, Coronation 1953
Oil on Canvas
50 x 63 cm
Government Art Collection
Government Art Collection
1937 - The Mission Room
The Mission Room 1937
Oil on Board
36.8 x 50.8 cm
Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum
1952 - The Mid-Day Studios
The Mid-Day Studios 1952
Oil on Board
14 x 25.3 cm
Manchester City Galleries
Manchester City Galleries
The painting is a small sketch of the Mid-Day Studios. This was a privately-run gallery located in a basement opposite Manchester Art Gallery on Mosley Street which made a considerable difference to local artists and to the cultural life of Manchester for five years after the Second World War, the gallery eventually closed in 1951.
Lowry had his first one-man show in Manchester there in 1948. The owner of the Gallery was Margo Ingham. The painting presents local people viewing the artworks in the gallery, there are various chairs littering the space and a dog in the foreground to the left.
1954 - The Mid-Day Studios
The Mid-Day Studios 1954
Oil on Canvas
49 x 75 cm
The L.S. Lowry Collection
The L.S. Lowry Collection
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