Description
People by a Fence by L S Lowry Original Drawing
An incredible example of L S Lowry’s figure works dating from 1964. As the industrial landscape began to change around him, in the latter decades of his life Lowry began to focus more on the characters in his paintings instead of the landscape which they inhabited. This particular example is an incredibly complete example of this series of works featuring a whole host of his most recognisable figures, capturing their interactions and characteristics so well.
Lowry’s friend, Edwin Mullins, recalls sitting with the artist in Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens, in the 1960s and asking him why he was so fascinated by crowds. Lowry replied; People think that crowds are all the same. But they’re not, you know. Everyone’s different. Look! That man’s got a twitch. He’s got a limp. He’s had too much beer. That woman, she’s angry with her child. Those two have had a row; you can see it from their faces. It’s wonderful, isn’t it? The battle of life, sir. That’s what it is. The battle of life. (T.G. Rosenthal, L.S Lowry, The Art and The Artist, Norwich 2010, p.183) Indeed, the art critic, John Berger, wrote about Lowry’s figures in 1966, two years after the present work was executed, that; The character of figures and crowds is also especially English. The industrial revolution has isolated them and uprooted them. Their home-made ideology, except when they are lead and organised by revolutionaries, is a kind of ironic stoicism. Nowhere else do crowds look so simultaneously civic and deprived. They know each other, recognise each other, exchange help and jokes – they are not, as 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’, published in New Society, 1966)
Provenance: Originally purchased by a lifelong friend of Harold Riley, Bonhams London 2017, Art Decor Gallery Whalley, Private Collection
