1951 - Yachts at Lytham St Anne's

Yachts at Lytham St Anne's 1951

Oil on Panel

21.5 x 34 cm
Sold [May 2012] for £133,250 inc. premium

Signed and Dated 'LS LOWRY 1951' (lower left)

PROVENANCE

With The Waddington Galleries, London

Lowry's paintings of pleasure boats at Lytham St. Anne's on the Lancashire coast form an important and well-documented aspect of the artist's oeuvre. It is well known that his mother favoured these over his darker industrial scenes, attracted, perhaps, to their cheerful palette and the nostalgic memory of holidays at the coast with her son. These works form an important aspect of the artist's output, from sketches made as early as 1902 to well into the 1970s, as Lowry relished in the painterly effects of depicting the character of the tranquil waters, dotted with pastel sails. 

T.G. Rosenthal writes 'it is not mere speculation to say that the sea, wherever he found it, gave him ample opportunity to work with his beloved, and so ingeniously exploited, white paint. More than the industrials, and more than his earth-bound landscapes the views of the sea had one overpowering component which existed on a much smaller - and frequently mostly hidden - aspect, namely an uninterrupted horizon where the preponderant white sky met the edge of the sea.' (T.G. Rosenthal, L.S. Lowry, The Art and the Artist, Unicorn Press, Norwich, 2010, p.208).