Street Scene

Street Scene is an exquisite, enigmatic study of the human condition, painted during a period in which Lowry created some of his most signature paintings. Having built a reputation in the preceding decades for his evocative depictions of the industrial landscape with factory workers, through the 1950s, Lowry increasingly turned his attention to studies of the people who populated these scenes. In a remark to Frank Mullineux, Lowry said ‘The strangest thing is that when the industrial scene passed out in reality, it passed out of my mind. I could not do it now, but I have no desire to do it now, and that would show’. The subject matter that had been a key part of his life, factories with belching chimneys, dingy streets of terraces, and dirty canals was fast disappearing, either destroyed in the Second World War or cleared away in the frenzy of post-war development. The figure studies that Lowry chose to paint were closely observed, and in many cases based upon individuals he would have come across in his job as a rent collector. Many can be recognised as figures that populated his industrial landscapes, and are depicted, as in the present work, as small groups of figures, lonely individuals, set against simplistic street backdrops, sparse rooms, or, specifically in the case of the later works, large expanses of white. While clearly a busy street setting, in Street Scene, the figures are roughly positioned in single file – the better to show their distinctive characters. There is a notable absence of perspective markers here, with just the suggestion of scenery through the prop-like building edge on the left hand side, the figures are replete with narrative.

The figure studies from this period have a real pre-Raphaelite drama, a carefully narrativized vignette of humanity where the interrelationships between the figures are brought into stark relief by Lowry’s talent for caricature. Commenting on Lowry’s ability to distil a group dynamic into very few lines, Mervyn Levy notes, ‘by the skill of editing, by the process of leaving out, Lowry squeezes the very essence of the subject […]. This is the average family in extremis.’ (M. Levy, The Drawings of L.S. Lowry: Public and Private, London, 1976, pl. 144). Similarly, in the present work, there is an abstraction – a dual vacancy of expression and articulation of personality – which highlights not only Lowry’s skill at capturing attitude (if not mimicking expression), but also his attention to the relationships between people. Speaking of a drawing called The Walk, dated likewise to 1952 and so like Street Scene that it could be an early sketch, Levy writes: ‘Simply a panorama of life, with one individual, the artist (far right), contemptuously turning his back on it all’ (ibid, pl. 140). While there is a parallel figure in the present work a (a hatted, suited man in profile walking with a stick), Lowry’s attentiveness to such scenes suggest a gaze which, if ‘contemptuous’, refuses to turn away.