While best known for his bustling crowds and grand industrial landscapes, L.S. Lowry was also drawn to more intimate and quiet depictions throughout his career, of which the present work is a fine example.

Rather than being amidst an urban centre, Henry Edward Street in Rhyl is in fact a street just off the seafront in the north Welsh seaside town, which sits at the mouth of the River Clywd. Lowry frequented beach towns in northern England and Wales often, expressing his love for the sea and the peace and solitude it offered him. There is a pencil drawing of the same street and from the same angle which was executed in 1929: demonstrating Lowry’s working nature and his particular attachment to this part of the country. As opposed to busy urban life, his works from seaside towns such as Rhyl showed Lowry’s other interest in people relaxing on their holidays, as well as being a document of the popularity of seaside towns in Britain during this time.

It was rarer to see Lowry depicting a specific location, he would more frequently use the sketches he produced during his rounds as a rent collector in Salford as the basis for compositions which in turn were amalgamations of several different views.

Specific locations in Lowry’s paintings often had personal significance for the Artist, such as in the present work. Lowry often went to Rhyl with his mother in the 1920s and 30s, where they stayed in guest houses, possibly even on this very street. Lowry’s relationship with his mother was tenuous, and one of their main shared passions was the seaside, his mother famously only ever liking one picture of Lowry’s, which was of the sea at Lytham. In his youth, the family holidayed at Lytham St Anne’s, on the Lancashire coast. Edward Henry Street was depicted multiple times by Lowry, including from a very similar viewpoint as below.

In addition to the street views, Lowry was also fascinated by Rhyl harbour, and he also would sit and draw scenes of the sea in situ. Lowry had a particular affinity for boats and the sea, and his paintings out at sea are some of his most beloved. Looking out at sea was a particularly inward and reflective experience for him, and perhaps in this instance in Rhyl, Lowry brought the same pensiveness and observation to the street just overlooking the seafront.