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).