Laurence Stephen Lowry, R.A.

Lefevre Gallery, London

The canvas is in good original condition. The paint surface is slightly dirty but the paint surface is otherwise in very good condition. There is no sign of retouching under ultra-violet light. Held in a painted composition frame which has sustained some slight abrasions. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 5381 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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Painted in 1957, Industrial Landscape with Figures dates from the year in which Lowry first became the subject of a short film for television, John Read's Painter at Home (see also lot 5). On the eve of its BBC broadcast, a reviewer writing in The Times complained, 'in fact it is almost no commentary and all talk. Mr Lowry is the last man to explain why the painting of one square mile or so – Oldham Road in Manchester – is the task that after half a century still satisfies him. The point is that it does. Changes that occur, for instance, in the style of people's clothes, he hardly notices. He asks only to go on painting what he sees in his 'mind's eye' ' (The Times, 17^th July 1957).

This observation manages to simultaneously further a commonly held (both then and now) misconception about Lowry and his work, whilst probably unconsciously also highlighting an aspect of his work that makes it so separate from that of his contemporaries. Whilst Manchester was certainly the prime subject for Lowry, the depiction of him as simply a painter of one specific locale and one specific genre was entirely wrong. Lowry had travelled a good deal around Britain and whilst not every area appealed to him, by 1957 he had painted images of Scotland (including the far north in Wick and Thurso), Wales, London, the Cotswolds and the North-East of England. Within these paintings there are of course some industrial scenes but there are also landscapes of great beauty, marines and the pure, simple paintings of the sea. However, the mention of Lowry's apparent indifference to change inadvertently highlights an aspect of his painting that is extremely significant, that he had reached a position in his work where he had distilled his imagery into a form which allowed the subject to become as fluid an element in the paintings as the paint itself.

 

Lowry had always acknowledged that within his work he would alter and replace elements as he felt suited his needs, but into the 1950s he began to work on paintings which came totally from within, paintings whose elements, whilst drawn from his own memory and experience, were used as the artist felt suited his composition. The 'composite' landscapes were often large-scale images, such as The Pond (Tate Collection), but the liberation of being able to produce paintings that escape from a topographical location imbues all his painting. This also manifested itself in the figures who inhabit his paintings, and, as here, his almost notational handling provides a perfect vehicle to remove any interest the viewer may have in details and concentrate their attention entirely on their mannerisms and interaction. Thus in Industrial Landscape with Figures we see Lowry using his 'mind's eye' to create a painting that perfectly encapsulates the spirit of any 'typical' working-class area of any 'typical' industrial city. By removing the specifics of place and time, Lowry manages to give his paintings an approachability that does not compromise his artistic achievements but still allows them to feel relevant over half a century after their creation.