Laurence Stephen Lowry, R.A.

Monty Bloom, Southport
Acquired by the present owner in the 1970s

Sunderland, Sunderland Art Gallery,  L.S. Lowry R.A. Retrospective Exhibition, 27th August - 17th September 1966, cat. no.102, with Arts Council tour to Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, City Art Gallery, Bristol, and Tate, London;
Southport, Atkinson Art Gallery, Centenary Exhibition 1967, The Bloom Collection, 1967, un-numbered exhibition.

Condition Report prepared by Hamish Dewar, April 2015: Structural Condition The canvas is unlined and is securely attached to the artist's original, keyed wooden stretcher. This is providing a stable structural support. There are traces of the artist's paint on the reverse of the canvas and the upper turnover edge has been inscribed the artist. Paint Surface The paint surface has a very thin matt varnish layer. There are several areas of slightly raised craquelure, most notably towards the upper horizontal framing edge. These appear stable and are not uncommon in Lowry's paintings. In the lower left quadrant of the composition there is a small light area to the right of the figure's right hand within the dark clothing where the artist appears to have incised the paint layer. Inspection under ultra-violet light shows just three small spots of retouching within the white pigments above the centre of the lower horizontal framing edge. Summary The painting would therefore appear to be in very good and stable condition and no work is required. Please contact the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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Looking at Lowry’s Figures in a Park, one’s mind is immediately drawn to one of his most famous and recognisable works, The Cripples (1949, The Lowry, Salford). This painting stands as a marker within Lowry's expansive oeuvre – and for many remains the touchstone against which his many figurative compositions are compared. Unlike the unidentifiable characters that populate many of his early industrial scenes here the artist turns with close analytical observation to the people that inhabit them; people that he met or observed during his daily rounds as a rent collector in the city, many of whom were relegated to the fringes of society. These so called ‘down and outs’ took particular prominence from the late 1940s onwards, with the lame and the disfigured providing a fascination to the artist. Lowry never flinched from the reality of those who had been dealt a poor hand in life – whether crippled at birth, or maimed during active service; those sleeping rough on walls or park benches, or victims of the industrial activity that brought so many to the city. But, unlike the assumption so often made that Lowry looked down on these outsiders, rather he acknowledged the role that they played in the makeup of the local society – they are part of the world that Lowry aimed to bring to notice, and without them his work loses its veracity and sense of social understanding.

The present work, as in The Cripples, is not awash with sentiment, but instead draws from first hand observation. Indeed, when his friend, the artist David Carr doubted that Lowry could have really seen all these ‘characters’ Lowry persuaded Carr to drive with him from Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester to Rochdale, pointing out 101 such memorable figures en route. It was with these later figurative compositions that one of Lowry’s important patrons Monty Bloom was so particularly fascinated, leading him to acquire the present work during the mid-1960s. By this period the landscape had all but disappeared into the thick, flake white background (in the present work we see hints of the building far right which provide some architectural setting). Instead it is the people that dominate the scene and to whom our eye is drawn. Less populated than The Cripples it results in a further sense of the isolation inflicted upon these subjects; the social detritus of the post-industrial cityscape. Yet there is no sadness. Instead they stand facing the viewer, challenging the ideas perhaps immediately springing to mind, and force us to notice them - to acknowledge them and to further investigate the stories that they have to tell. These paintings are among the most personal executed by Lowry throughout the course of his career and award a very close insight into his understanding of his immediate surroundings and the role that he, as artist and observer, had to play within it.