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Lot Essay
The present painting shows a view taken from near the Banqueting House and the Victoria Embankment, London, looking downstream along the river Thames. The bridge in the foreground is Hungerford Bridge, the main railway bridge which connects Charing Cross Railway Station with the south of the river. Beyond this, one can make out Waterloo and Blackfriars bridges respectively, with the great dome and drum of St Paul's Cathedral visible beyond the trees on the Embankment.
Lowry painted London subjects on only a few occasions, although he had come to know the city well. When he did, he tended to choose a familiar landmark that could not be mis-identified. His London paintings depict real places, unlike a large number of compositions which heralded from his native North West where he chose to amalgamate familiar scenes and views. In the present composition, the artist has picked out ideas or motifs that appear as vocabulary in many of his urban works; a viaduct, smoking chimneys, a hazy horizon and a tug boat, although as viewer, we know immediately that the setting is London by the landmarks and the dots of double-decker buses on the two road bridges in the distance.
Lowry painted London subjects on only a few occasions, although he had come to know the city well. When he did, he tended to choose a familiar landmark that could not be mis-identified. His London paintings depict real places, unlike a large number of compositions which heralded from his native North West where he chose to amalgamate familiar scenes and views. In the present composition, the artist has picked out ideas or motifs that appear as vocabulary in many of his urban works; a viaduct, smoking chimneys, a hazy horizon and a tug boat, although as viewer, we know immediately that the setting is London by the landmarks and the dots of double-decker buses on the two road bridges in the distance.