Laurence Stephen Lowry, R.A.

The Lefevre Gallery, London, 1964
Sale, Christie's, London, 18 July 1975, lot 85, whence purchased by Crane Kalman Gallery, London
Grove Fine Art, Manchester

London, Lefevre Gallery, Recent Paintings by L.S. Lowry, June-July 1964, no.20;
London, Crane Kalman Gallery, L.S. Lowry: A Selection of 36 Paintings, November-December 1975, no.31, illustrated in the catalogue;
Salford, The Lowry, L.S. Lowry's Street Life, 20 October 2001 - January 2002.

The canvas has been relined. There are scattered areas of craquelure in all four quadrants of the paint surface. Otherwise the impasto is wonderfully thick and the paint surface is in good overall condition. Examination under ultra-violet light reveals a tiny spot of fluorescence along the left edge in the upper left quadrant which may be retouching. Held in a painted wooden frame. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 5381 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

To be sold with a copy of the catalogue for the exhibition at Crane Kalman Gallery, L.S. Lowry: A Selection of 36 Paintings, November-December 1975.

In a career that spanned over six decades, the sheer volume of paintings and drawings that Lowry produced can seem overwhelming, and whilst there are significant bodies of work that treat subjects other than the 'typical' Lowry industrial landscape, there are still a very large number which use the mills and streets of the north-western towns and cities as their theme. Yet such is Lowry's ability that he managed to bring a freshness to this vision throughout his oeuvre.

From his earliest work, Lowry had combined a very subtle but clear facility to people a composition in a way that enlivened the most unpromising setting with views that had their basis in real topographical locations, but from the later 1940s onwards, he began to produce composite paintings that treated the architecture and topography as a vocabulary from which he could create images that move beyond mere depiction of place to achieve a timeless evocation of a world that even in Lowry's time was disappearing. The streets of the industrial cities of Britain in the inter-war years, and especially the poorer quarters that Lowry depicted were frequently still drab, ill-maintained and encrusted with the soot and grime of years. Yet within those areas existed a community spirit that the residents jealously guarded, and although one could suggest that Lowry's vision became more idealised as the years passed, this could also be seen as a vehicle by which he was able to extract the essence of those communities. In Mill Scene with Figures the setting is the kind of workshop-lined street that is familiar in Lowry's painting, with the device of the street corner used to provide a structure for the x-shaped composition of the foreground where the figures go about their business, in groups or alone, in a figure of eight that keeps the eye of the viewer constantly moving. Above this stands the huge form of the chimney, so tall that the top disappears beyond the confines of the painting, the black of its sooty brickwork mirrored in the white of the lamppost that stands before it, giving it human scale and linking the world of people to the world of work. And indeed the world of the people in Mill Scene with Figures is a surprisingly active place, with children and dogs playing, adults gossiping and checking the newspapers and heading to and fro. By such devices Lowry reminds us that even in the most insalubrious places, real lives are lived, and if the gesture of the child who skips away from us with his arms raised is anything to go by, they are lives that retain at least some spontaneous joy.