Laurence Stephen Lowry, R.A.

Lefevre Gallery, London, where acquired by David Carr and thence by descent to the present owner

London, Tate Gallery, Arts Council of Great Britain, L. S. Lowry R.A., Retrospective Exhibition, 1966, cat. no.47, with tour to Sunderland Art Gallery, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, and City Art Gallery, Bristol.

Shelly Rohde, A Private View of L.S.Lowry, Book Club Associates, London 1979, illustrated pl.XXII.

The following condition report has been prepared by Hamish Dewar Ltd, 14 Masons Yard, Duke Street, St James's, London SW1Y 6BU. EXAMINATION / TREATMENT REPORT UNCONDITIONAL AND WITHOUT PREJUDICE Structural Condition The canvas has at some stage been cut out from it's stretcher and subsequently strip-lined and repaired. The strip-lining has ensured an even and secure structural support. Paint surface The paint surface has an even varnish layer and there are thin lines of retouching around the framing sight edges. The only other retouchings that are visible under ultra-violet light are very small spots between the windows of the house on the left of the composition and other tiny specks. Summary The painting would therefore appear to be in good and stable condition and no further work is required.
"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."

'On either side ... are other streets, mazes, jungles of tiny houses cramped and huddled together, two rooms above and two below ... public houses by the score where forgetfulness lurks in a mug; pawnshops where you can raise the wind to buy forgetfulness... '(Walter Greenwood, Love on the Dole, 1933, reprinted Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1976, p.11).

This short quotation from the beginning of Greenwood's 1933 novel, Love on the Dole, immediately drops us into the world of the back to back houses and the meagre streets overlooked by the mills of Lowry's paintings. Set in a thinly disguised Salford in the Depression of the late 1920s, Greenwood's characters' lives are a round of constant striving to make ends meet. Throughout the novel, drinking surfaces as a constant, be that the furtive nips the women characters take to divert themselves from the grimness of the everyday, or the cheap pubs outside which the unemployed men gather, too short of money to get inside and join their former workmates. Lowry and Greenwood were almost exact contemporaries, and whilst their backgrounds were very different there is no doubting their real understanding of the realities of the neighbourhoods they presented on both page and canvas.

Lowry's images of people in the streets of the industrial districts of Salford and Manchester are, from the earliest examples, clearly defined between those with a purpose and those left behind. The sweeping crowds going to work in the mills and factories, arriving en masse at the sound of the siren that heralded the beginning of yet another day of toil, at least have a destination, even though that might be a cramped position by a lathe, loom or other machine. Apart from these are those without jobs, those for whom the empty day offers simply a challenge of how to fill the hours before the return to lodgings or hostel. We see them throughout Lowry's street scenes, the men often leaning on walls, or just waiting at street corners, killing time. When they walk, they walk with bowed heads and hunched shoulders, collars turned up, mufflers tight against the chill of the day. The women too stand around, either surrounded by broods of children playing on pavements and in gutters, or in huddles, shawls transforming their outlines into replicas of each other, only height offering any real distinction between them.

Home from the Pub suggests that Lowry has chosen to elevate a very specific moment. The existence of a slight preliminary drawing in a private collection does indicate that it was almost certainly based on an actual observation, and the large scale of the figures makes them very much the hub of the composition. Whilst Lowry had used larger figures in his paintings before, it was around the time of Home from the Pub that his preoccupation with this element of his work began to develop. Where Home From the Pub stands out from other paintings with which it might be compared is in the fact that the central figures are so clearly in a moment of happiness and exhilaration, albeit clear where that might have come from.

It is interesting to note that this consistent exploration of larger figures in his paintings coincided with the period when Lowry was becoming friendly with David Carr (1915-1968), a young painter who had begun to collect Lowry's work. The two became very close, and despite their very different ages and backgrounds, the friendship with Carr offered Lowry a new perspective and exposure to the work of the younger generation of artists. Their letters clearly show that both artists enjoyed the cross-currents of ideas they discussed, and for Lowry, who had been working in a form of self-imposed isolation for over a decade, the impetus of Carr's personality and enthusiasm seems to have been of great importance. As Allen Andrews noted, 'David Carr was the first artist with whom Lowry built any relationship based on mutual regard' (Allen Andrews, The Life of L.S.Lowry, Jupiter Books, London 1977, p.84).

They seem to have first come into contact in the winter of 1943, after Carr viewed Lowry's Lefevre Gallery exhibition, and in their correspondence the discussion of elements of painting that are much beyond polite reply appears very early. In a letter to Carr of 9th December 1943, Lowry discusses the effect outside the basic subject that he tries to achieve with his work, these observations being very much in response to Carr's previous correspondence. Carr clearly saw that Lowry's work was not so much the nostalgia with which he is sometimes still tainted, but a deeper understanding of the people, places and ambience of an industrial environment. This character, every bit as strong and pervasive as Paul Nash's genius loci, was stated very pertinently and forcefully by John Berger in a later essay on Lowry:

'The character of the figures and crowds is also specially English. The industrial revolution has isolated them and uprooted them. Their home-made ideology, except when they are led and organised by revolutions, is a kind of ironic stoicism. Nowhere else do crowds look so simultaneously civic and deprived. They know each other, recognize each other, exchange help and jokes – they are not, as it is sometimes said, like lost souls in limbo; they are fellow-travellers through a life which is impervious to most of their choices' (John Berger, 'Lowry and the Industrial North', New Society, 1966).

Berger's recognition of the creaking industrial ghost of the 1920s and 1930s depicted in Lowry's paintings perfectly complements Carr's recognition that Lowry was extracting from that world a sense of something beyond mere depiction of mills and streets, '...the soul, the character, or what you will, of those slums and town fringes as you do, in their queer and often ghastly beauty' (David Carr, correspondence with L.S.Lowry, 5^th December 1943).

It is thus intriguing to consider that of the Lowry paintings that Carr collected, many, such as Home from the Pub, The Prayer Meeting (Private Collection) and The Creditors' Meeting (Private Collection), featured not crowds but collections or groupings of distinct individuals. As such, Lowry was able to bring a greater humanity and sensitivity to his rendition of these people, and his gift for the telling detail of a gesture, pose or movement is allowed full rein. In Home from the Pub, the three women sway uneasily towards us, arm in arm, one swinging her hat on her hand, another waving a bottle. The sense of exhilarated release, however temporary, is almost palpable, and is made even more poignant by its contrast with the drab surroundings. Yet for all their effort to raise themselves with a laugh or a song, we know this moment of joy is just transient, and the railings either side of the pathway down which they career seem to channel these women back to the mundane and the everyday, such as we see in Discord (fig.1, Private Collection) where the mother of the family sits static, surrounded by children, but with a tell-tale bottle on the mantlepiece.

One well-documented example of Carr's observations on Lowry's painting demonstrates not only the way in which the two men shared ideas, but also how we can see Lowry still retained a distance, even with such a close friend. Most commentators and writers on Lowry have remarked on how he maintained a sense of reserve, keeping his friends at arm's length from each other, and often presenting subtly differing versions of himself and his life to each observer: '...the mystic painter to Collis' critic, the cloth-cap hillbilly to Corcoran's Bond Street dealer...with Laing a connoisseur of music' (Shelly Rohde, L.S.Lowry: A Biography, The Lowry Press, Salford 1999, p.366). Indeed such misapprehension is perpetuated by much of the modern Lowry industry thriving on the image of the home-spun, 'down our street' Northern eccentric, something that is completely at odds with the painterly abilities and wider intellectual interests we know Lowry held and which has become much more widely understood through the recent scholarly exhibitions and publications on the artist.

However, the way in which even with a close friend Lowry would gently sidestep issues can be seen in the account of the creation of The Cripples (The Lowry, Salford) of 1949. Carr visited Lowry when the painting was at an early stage of development, and after looking at it for some time casually remarked that one could hardly expect to see so many examples of people afflicted by such problems. Lowry immediately took issue with this and the two drove off in search of proof that this was no flight of fancy, but pure observation. Remembering, of course, that in the late 1940s those who had suffered injury and loss of limb in both world wars would have been a not uncommon sight, Lowry later recounted that on the drive between Manchester and Rochdale they saw 101 memorable figures. Regardless of the neatness of their total, Lowry's affinity for spotting those on the fringes was completely confirmed. The painting continued, and Lowry later wrote to Carr that he had been working on the figures, adapting them as he went along. Having given one figure a hook in place of a hand Lowry credits this to Carr; '...that suggestion of yours was a master stroke.' And yet was Lowry simply passing a compliment to his friend that disguised the fact that the idea was in fact his own, already existing in the roll-call of odd and afflicted figures that filled his imagination? See for example lot 182, The Cripples (Political Argument): in comparison to The Cripples (1949, The Lowry, Salford) it is clearly evident that the two figures to which Lowry refers in his letter to Carr existed concurrently in another form, hook and all. The pose and gestures of the two figures is completely consistent with their portrayal in The Cripples, but Lowry has altered them, not in line with Carr's suggestion, but his own. He has aged the men deliberately for the large painting and enhanced their sense of caricature, whereas in the smaller study, they are younger, perhaps more vulnerable.

Lowry's visits to Carr and his family at their home in Norfolk, as with his visits to friends elsewhere, have been likened by Shelly Rohde to the progresses of Elizabeth I, with the painter finding subtle ways to bring the household in line with his own tastes, be that mealtimes, menus or the programmes on the wireless. However, it would have also offered Lowry the opportunity to see not only Carr's own paintings but also his fine collection of works by other artists, such as William Roberts, whose The Barber's Shop is offered here as lot 21. A student at Cedric Morris' East Anglian School of Painting where he was a contemporary of Lucian Freud, Carr had carefully collected both artists he knew and the work of those further afield. A key figure in the foundation of the Norfolk Contemporary Art Society and its first President, Carr was an active campaigner for the cause of modern and progressive art in the 1950s and 1960s as well as being an accomplished if now little seen painter whose untimely early death  and apparent reluctance to exhibit has allowed him to become unjustifiably forgotten.