Laurence Stephen Lowry, R.A.

Alex Reid and Lefevre, London, whence purchased by Ian Phillips
Acquired from the family of the above by the present owner

The board is in good overall condition. There is a small area of craquelure in the upper right quadrant but otherwise the paint surface is in good overall condition. Held behind glass in a gilded redtilinear frame with a cream slip.
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Although it is dated 1935, the present work has much in common with Lowry's painting of the previous decade and may reflect the artist's practice of working on a piece over a very protracted period and then adding the current date once the work was ready to be sent out on exhibition. The darker tones of the street and the buildings, allied with the complicated profile of the roofs, are very typical of the paintings of the later 1920s and early 1930s and reflect the gradual moves the artist was making towards securing his very distinctive mature style that appears in the later years of the 1930s.

The overall tone of the earlier Lowry paintings is often rather dark, as seen for instance in A Manufacturing Town (Science Museum Collection), but according to the artist this changed in the middle of the 1920s following a conversation with Bernard Taylor, the arts correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. Lowry recalled visiting him in 1925 with a painting on which he wanted Taylor's opinion. Taylor felt it was too dark to stand out against the deep colours still fashionable for domestic walls. When Lowry questioned how this might be remedied, Taylor answered 'That's your affair, not mine'. Lowry continued, 'I was very angry with him, very cross indeed. But I went away and painted a couple of figures on a pure white background and I took them to him. "That's what I meant" he said, "that's the thing to do" And he was right' (the artist, quoted in Allen Andrews, The Life of L.S.Lowry, Jupiter Books, London 1977, p.54).

Working with a very simple palette, Lowry's use of small areas of colour to animate the composition is key to his compositional technique and here, with most of the human activity gathered around the church door, he uses dabs of single colours to give movement to them. However, although the blackened form of the church towers over the figures before it, it is the factory chimney in the background that dwarfs even the church, marking the lordship of industry over all.