1930 - Arlington Row, Bibury

Arlington Row, Bibury 1930

Pencil

18.5 x 26 cm

Sold [May 2013] for £34,850 including premium

Signed and Dated 'L S Lowry 1930.' (lower left)

PROVENANCE

Harold and Edith Timperley

Thence by descent

LITERATURE

H.W. Timperley, A Cotswold Book, Jonathan Cape, London, 1931, frontispiece facing p.246 (ill.b&w)

Shelley Rohde, L.S. Lowry; A Biography, Lowry Press, Salford, 1999, p.171 (ill.b&w)

For Lowry, the Timperley commission allowed him to indulge in uncharacteristically picturesque settings, concluding in a competent and academic series of mainly uninhabited scenes of rural and village Cotswold life worked up from photographic sources. In Arlington Row, Bibury, the final plate in A Cotswold Book, Lowry can't seem to resist the inclusion of a family of five linear figures making their way through the centre of the composition.

Arlington Row, Bibury, Gloucestershire, built in 1380 as a monastic wool store, is amongst the Cotswold's most recognisable views, not least due to its popularity as a frequently employed set for film and television. 

Avidly sought after whenever previously offered, four examples from the Cotswold series and related works have, at points, been in the esteemed collections of Ted Frape (former Director of the Salford Art Gallery), Andras Kalman (Lowry's dealer) and Selwyn Demmy (bookmaker and extensive Lowry collector).