1930 - Almshouses at Northleach

Almshouses at Northleach 1930

Pencil

26.5 x 18.5 cm

Sold [May 2013] for £23,750 including premium

Signed and Dated 'L S Lowry 1930' (lower right)

PROVENANCE

Harold and Edith Timperley

Thence by descent

The present and following lot are from a series of illustrative depictions of idyllic views by Lowry produced for Harold Timperley's topographical survey A Cotswold Book. This commission, amongst the artist's earliest, came at the suggestion of Harold's wife Edith who was ever so fond of Lowry and felt it would be good to encourage her friend; "In those days he (Lowry) would get enormously depressed. On one such occasion, when he was particularly low, I persuaded Harold to ask Lowry to do the drawings for his Cotswold Book." (Edith Timperley in Shelley Rhode, L.S. Lowry; A Biography, Lowry Press, Salford, 1999, p.171).

A Cotswold Book reproduced twelve of Lowry's drawings, but it is known by exhibition records from The Bury Art Gallery, 1962 that further works were produced, includingMangersbury (1930, Private Collection) and presumably also the present work Almshouses at Northleach.

Harold and Edith Timperley can be counted amongst Lowry's closest friends and confidants from this period and for many years to come; indeed following the death of his mother in 1939 the Timperleys took the distraught Lowry in to their home, caring for him for three weeks whilst he recovered from his loss.