Laurence Stephen Lowry, R.A.

Alex Reid and Lefevre, London, whence acquired by the present owner's family in the late 1940s

The canvas is unlined. There are areas of very light craquelure in the upper left and right quadrants. There is a small scratch along the upper edge in the upper left quadrant and a few scattered tiny scratches along the upper edge in the upper right quadrant. There is another small scratch, approximately 3cm. in length which meets the right edge in the upper right quadrant. There are areas of surface dirt visible in the upper left and right quadrants, particularly in the sky. There is no sign of retouching under ultra-violet light. Held under glass in a black painted wooden and plaster frame with a white slip. The reverse of the canvas is protected by a sheet of perspex which has been punctuated with holes allowing air circulation.
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With all its colour, noise, movement, crowds and opportunity for incident, a fair would seem to be a natural theme for Lowry. Steeped in Victorian heritage, the travelling fairs that visited virtually every town and district across Britain at some point each year were always a hub of local excitement; and yet it is a subject that Lowry treated only rarely. Spontaneous street events feed the early paintings of the 1920s when Lowry was honing his style and the titles of paintings such as An Accident, The Removal, An Arrest, and Man Taken Ill give a flavour of what caught his attention and first led him to build up intricate crowd scenes within the architectural framework of the industrial north-west.

Although Lowry was always a relatively prolific painter, during the 1930s his personal circumstances were such that his painting opportunities were severely curtailed. In 1932, the year he first had work accepted at the Royal Academy, his father died unexpectedly. Robert Lowry was deeply in debt, a fact he had hidden from his family, and his son took it upon himself to ensure that all his creditors were paid in full, something that took him well over a year. In addition, his mother, always a difficult figure, took to her bed where she was to remain for the next seven and a half years of her life. His mother became increasingly demanding as the years passed and accounted for almost all of his time; thus painting could only be done late at night while she slept. As Lowry would tell close friends later in his life, and as they themselves observed, the strictures of this period took a huge toll on him. By the time of her death in 1939, he seems to have been close to almost complete mental and physical breakdown. Thus we find that the paintings of the 1937-39 period, as well as being very few in number, often display an intensity that can seem at odds with the levity of their subject matter. The Fairground is just such a picture. At first sight we have an image of unbridled levity, with the crowds milling happily about the scene centred on the merry-go-round, a familiar type at the time known as a 'Noah's Ark Speedway ride'. Into the distance stallholders gather onlookers to their shows, children dodge back and forth between the adults and the sense of entertainment is palpable.

When one looks more closely however, there are several features that slightly puncture this mood. Firstly, the figures that populate the scene, whilst mostly a rather jolly group dressed in what could easily be 'Sunday Best', are joined by a small number whose mood and appearance are clearly at odds with the rest of the crowd. The woman who walks into the painting from the right with a child wrapped in her shawl has, without any obvious markers, an air very distinct from the other figures around her, perhaps because her attention seems to be elsewhere. Devoid of colour, her presence strikes a slightly uncomfortable note. Similarly, while most of the crowd are diverted by the entertainments, in the right foreground a male figure stands directly facing us. Angular and awkward, he appears to wish to engage with us but somehow is unable. These single still figures facing the viewer in otherwise busy crowd scenes became much more prevalent in the paintings of the 1930s and there is a good case to see them as having a strong autobiographical element.

Lowry's usual working method, and one which remained remarkably consistent right up to the 1960s, was to make small sketches on the spot, often on odd scraps of paper or the backs of envelopes, to fix the main points of a composition, which he would then work up into more finished drawings. These drawings often retain accurate topographical titles, which are invaluable in fixing locations for the resultant paintings in which Lowry frequently used a good deal of licence, shifting perspectives, altering buildings and landmarks and then populating the scene with characters from the extensive repertoire he had developed. However, the wonderful imagery of The Fairground relates specifically to the famous seaside resort of Pleasure Beach, Blackpool and is unusual in that virtually all the major features of painting are not only identifiable but are still in situ (see figs. 1-3). As much of the Manchester Lowry painted was disappearing even during his lifetime, presents an almost unique opportunity to compare Lowry's rendition of a subject with the reality. Whereas Lowry often exercises a huge level of licence with his settings, moving or replacing buildings or architectural features, here the setting appears to have given him exactly what he was looking for. The landmark structures of Pleasure Beach, Blackpool are all present, with the Noah's Ark Funhouse, built in 1922 visible on the left and the Sir Hiram Maxim Flying Machine, constructed in 1904, beyond. The tower above the entrance to the Grand National Roller Coaster, designed by Joseph Emberton and constructed in 1935, stands in the middle distance and thus offers us a fairly exact suggestion of when Lowry may have visited the town.

Blackpool in the 1930s, like many of the large British seaside resorts was a magnet as a holiday destination for the working classes and the annual 'works fortnight' would have been a highpoint of the year for many families. Therefore The Fairground sits amongst a handful of his paintings, such as Good Friday, Daisy Nook (see fig.4) and The Regatta (both Private Collections) that celebrate the way in which such events could provide a release from the everyday. Whilst it was not unusual for years, if not decades, to elapse between Lowry's experience of a location and the final execution in paint, here Lowry must have found all he needed. As there appear to be no other major paintings that take Blackpool as their subject, perhaps we can surmise that Lowry felt that this painting encapsulated everything he felt about the scene.   

Lowry's technique for producing the painting is also worth considering. Whilst it was not uncommon for him to work on paintings over long and protracted periods (the finger marks on the stretcher of The Fairground give some indicator of how many times this was on and off the easel), he also developed a very personal technique of scraping back elements of the painting to act as highlights, effectively giving himself an additional colour by showing the ground on which he was painting. Usually, this is limited to small areas, such as window ledges, railings or lampposts, but here he has pushed this much further, scraping away large expanses of paint to create whole elements such as faces, hands, arms and much of the structure of the merry-go-round itself. This extreme involvement with the medium may also hint at the underlying tensions that the artist was experiencing.

With a large output spanning over six decades, it is inevitable that works by Lowry that are previously unknown to collectors and scholars will appear. However it is highly unusual for a painting of the stature of The Fairground to have remained unknown to scholars and collectors for over half a century. Retaining a fragment of a Lefevre Gallery stock label on its stretcher, the picture is apparently unpublished and unexhibited in almost six decades, having been purchased by the present owners' family probably in the late 1940s and thus before his reputation had begun to grow beyond a small circle of enlightened collectors.

The Fairground is one of Lowry's most significant paintings from the decade when he distilled his style into that which has made him one of Britain's most collected artists. Its reappearance must be seen as one of the most significant additions to the artist's known oeuvre in recent years. The work is also an exceptional period depiction of one of Britain's most famous visitor attractions.

We are grateful to David Graham, Louise Facey at Pleasure Beach, Blackpool and Michael Smith of the Fairground Heritage Trust for their kind assistance with the cataloguing of this lot.