Lot Essay
Discussing the artist's seascapes, John Rothenstein (Modern English Painters I: Sickert to Lowry, London, 1984, p.274) comments: 'Lowry's seascapes are models of simplification; not only ships and shores and clouds, but even big waves are excluded so that the artist may press nearer to expressing the essential nature of the sea. With this subject he was troubled neither by his uncertain draughtsmanship nor his difficulty in composing: his exact perception of tone and colour was enough, and the little canvasses, half sky, half sea, with neat lines of blackish ripples, exert a mesmeric effect.
In the spring of 1951 I spent an afternoon visiting dealers' galleries with Graham Greene. In one of these we were shown paintings by Tintoretto, Degas and other illustrious masters, but his attention remained upon a tiny canvas, divided almost exactly in two by a horizontal line, the upper half stained with a faint grey and the lower with a dusky green - an early seascape by Lowry which he bought and insisted on carrying promptly away'.
In the spring of 1951 I spent an afternoon visiting dealers' galleries with Graham Greene. In one of these we were shown paintings by Tintoretto, Degas and other illustrious masters, but his attention remained upon a tiny canvas, divided almost exactly in two by a horizontal line, the upper half stained with a faint grey and the lower with a dusky green - an early seascape by Lowry which he bought and insisted on carrying promptly away'.