The Black Church

Lowry had a great interest in churches, and he returned repeatedly to the subject throughout his career. He was in general fascinated by the places around which crowds assemble and towards which they are drawn. Sometimes, as in his many variations of a crowd moving towards or away from a sporting fixture, the place is, as it were, off-screen. In the present picture, the church takes centre stage, appearing as a monument to stillness amidst the intense bustle of the crowd. The open door of the church stands as invitation to a retreat from the throng, though no figure seems imminently likely to approach and enter. Rather, the pedestrians play with dogs and children in the street surrounding the church, or walk with intent to an unknown destination. The lightness of the sky and vague hints of hands in the lower left quadrant of the church clock indicate that it is morning. The factory, pumping smoke into the sky, tells us that work continues there apace, and that many of the figures moving through the scene might be on their way to a shift there.

The Black Church benefits from Lowry’s signature, brilliant facility in rendering character and mood with only a few brushstrokes. The dynamics of the crowd - groups and pairs and solitary figures bent against the cold of the day and moving in every direction - capture a sense of reality in despite of their gestural rendering. Lowry was a child of the late nineteenth century, and during his lifetime he witnessed the rise of photography as a documentary tool. His remarkable ability lay in capturing the feeling and sense of a scene as readily as a photograph without the aid of photography or photorealism. Instead, he could capture the essence of a crowd and convey it as thoroughly, and with more verve, than any photographic lens.