Coming Home from the Mill 1928
Oil on Panel
43 x 53.3 cm
An everyday street scene depicting factories and mills with smoking chimneys, the street full of men, women and children leaving work. A red and cream coloured cart is being pulled by a black horse which stands on the opposite side of the road, and there are shops in the background to left.
The sky is white and grey with billowing smoke clouds.
His draftmanship is really apparent in this. Matchstick cats and dogs, bahhhhhh humbug
ReplyDeleteThis work was the context of a poem, "Spooky Action at a Distance", written by Gary Hugh Day as a recognition of the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. Reading the poem while looking at this changes one's perspective.
ReplyDeleteSpooky Action at a Distance by Gary Hugh Day
They had the same print
In their living rooms, Lowry:
Coming Home from the Mill, 1928.
And whenever they glanced
At this lost world,
They felt the familiarity
Of that other place
Which was also home,
Suffusing them with a sense
Of being in two places at once,
Unsure where each began
And the other ended.
She said they were the couple
On the bottom right, moving away
From the patchy crowd
With its comedy hats and boots,
Solo dances, simple mimes,
And pavement melodramas.
All gone, like the factories
The coloured wagon and
The open doors of terraced houses.
Once more his eye is drawn
To the couple heading out of
The frame; arms linked, in step,
And he wonders if she still
Feels this ghostly closeness,
The nearest they come to touching now.