Laurence Stephen Lowry, R.A.

The Lefevre Gallery, London where acquired by the family of the present owner in the 1960s

The board is sound. The surface is intentionally textured and uneven. There is a possible very old fleck of paint loss to the ladies cheek on the right. There are one or two tiny media marks and specks of staining. Generally the work is in excellent original condition. Ultraviolet light reveals no apparent signs of retouching. Held in a gilt plaster frame with a canvas inset. Please telephone the department on 0207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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This apparently simple arrangement of six figures is, perhaps, one of the most illuminating paintings of Lowry's later years, offering us significant insight into not only the sources from which he drew inspiration, but what resonances those same sources had for him.

The simple basis here is to be found in a production of Luigi Pirandello's 1921 play, Six Characters in Search of an Author. Staged in 1963, the lead role of The Father was taken by Ralph Richardson. The play begins during a rehearsal of one of Pirandello's own plays, but this is interrupted by six figures who reveal themselves as characters from an unfinished play looking for an opportunity to have their story told and completed. Initial disbelief shifts as The Director decides to stage their story, but the Characters find the actors' rendition of them lacking and offer to play themselves. As the play unfolds, the boundaries between the real and perceived truths in both story and presentation are constantly questioned. Lowry clearly delighted in this, and as Sheila Fell recalled, 'He went back time and time again, twice more with me, many times on his own. He painted the small girl in it, with her long dark hair, he painted the Six Characters; he talked about it endlessly, analysing it, wondering at it. It absolutely fascinated him' (Shelly Rohde, A Private View of L.S.Lowry, Collins, London 1979, p.178). Any comparison between Lowry's drawings and the final paintings throughout his career makes it clear that he had always populated his paintings with figures drawn from memory, and once one becomes familiar with the 'cast' of a Lowry crowd, certain regulars appear again and again, seen and remembered way back in time and then stepping out onto the canvas. Thus, one can see that the idea of the dislocated and, in a sense, incomplete characters of the play offered an experience to Lowry that had a distinct echo of the figures who populate his paintings.

The fragility of humankind, and the threads of luck or ill-fortune that can dictate huge swathes of an individual's life were themes that were only too real to Lowry. His work took him through some of the poorest districts of Manchester and Salford where he would have had ample opportunity to see those who had fallen on hard times. Indeed, one of Lowry's greatest attributes is his ability to pick a subject that in less sensitive hands would have simply appeared as mockery, such as the tramp witnessed shamefacedly snatching a half-eaten sandwich from a dustbin, or the broken, decrepit individuals found sitting aimlessly on park benches. He was sympathetic to those who had been dealt a poor hand, and recognised that he drew elements of them into his painting, 'My characters? They are all people you might see in a park. They are real people, sad people; something's gone wrong in their lives. I'm attracted to sadness, and there are some very sad things you see' (The Artist, interviewed by Edwin Mullins for "My Lonely Life", The Sunday Telegraph, 20^th November 1966). Divorced from the architectural settings that are usually associated with Lowry, the figures in A Family of Six are presented without any clues as to their history or background, forcing the viewer to assess them purely as figures, something that was increasingly important to the artist in his later years.

True to Fell's recollection, Lowry did indeed make other paintings based on this subject, of which the best known is the pendant pair Little Girl Seen from the Front and Little Girl Seen from the Back, both of 1964 (The Lowry, Salford).