Street in Maryport

细节

Laurence Stephen Lowry, R.A. (1887-1976)
Street in Maryport
signed 'L S Lowry' (lower left), signed again, inscribed and dated 'Street in Maryport (now demolished)/L S Lowry/17 September 1966' (on the backboard)
pencil
9 5/8 x 13¼in. (24.5 x 33.6cm.)

来源

with Stone Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne.

注意事项

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拍品专文

The present work depicts a street in Maryport, Cumbria which has since been demolished. What is most striking about this work is Lowry's masterful reduction of the composition to the barest essentials. In the bold classical composition and his assured use of the pencil, Lowry demonstrates his expertise as a fine draughtsman. The sheet appears at once overwhelmingly empty and simultaneously full of emotion. The viewer is drawn in into the work and captivated by the carefully delineated houses that line this empty street. The eye comes to rest on the lampost at the end of the street, which appears to be emblematic of the individualism and loneliness of existence that Lowry so clearly felt. The sheet and street are simultaneously and equivalently empty. Lowry has emptied out of the composition all superfluous elements yet the drawing remains brimful with resurgent emotion. The paraphanalia of external life is supplanted by a pure, iconic vision.

Lowry visited Cumbria intermittently from the 1930s. By the 1960s Lowry was no longer painting his industrial scenes and his vision had become much more reductive, as the present work attests. Street in Maryport was painted in the year of the major Arts Council Retrospective which toured the country, finally to be viewed at the Tate in 1967. Lowry's fondness for pencil was recorded by Allen Andrews in the The Life of L.S.Lowry (London, 1977), "I am immensely fond of pencil. I like pencil to hang up in my house. I think there's something wonderful about a pencil drawing." (see Sandling & Leber, L S Lowry: The Man and His Art, Salford).