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Lot Essay
'One day I missed a train from Pendlebury - which I had ignored for seven years - and as I left the station I saw the Acme Spinning Company's Mill. The huge black framework of rows of yellow-lit windows stood up against the sad, damp-charged afternoon sky. The mill was turning out - hundreds of little pinched black figures, heads bent down, as though to offer the smallest surface to the whirling particles of sodden grit, were hurrying across the asphalt, along the mean streets with the inexplicable derelict gaps in the rows of houses, past the telephone poles, homeward to high tea or pubwards, away from the mill and without a backward glance. I watched this scene - which I'd looked at many times without seeing - with rapture.'
Lowry broached the subject of the mill at several points during his life. An earlier mill scene of 1917-18 is comparatively devoid of people; the scene is largely articulated by imposing buildings and architectural forms that have the effect of overshadowing the figures present. This domination of architecture over the figures implies the enslavement of Lowry's people to the industry that employs them during a period of increased industrialisation in the north of England. Indeed, the present work is a scene of impetuous activity and movement.
Lowry is painting here in a very impressionistic manner - loosely applied paint in undiluted blocks of colour using short brush strokes. This immediate technique creates a sense of urgency and spontaneity absent in earlier compositions on the same theme. The technique itself takes on a kinetic force, producing a blurred vision which has the effect of propelling the people along their individual paths, anonymous automotons in this industrialised society.
The high viewpoint priviledges the viewer who is voyeuristically removed from this scene of drudgery. Lowry invites the viewer to observe the street world of the north of England. The success of the image lies in its empiricism and accute observations of humanity. Lowry rarely painted topographically accurate urban landscapes, rather he assembled elements which he had perceived directly to create composite images of recognisable forms. In this scene though, it is the people who fascinate Lowry and provide the main focus of interest. 'The buildings were there and I was fascinated by the buildings. I had never seen anything like them before, but I was fascinated by the people who lived and worked in them. A country landscape is fine without people, but an industrial set without people is an empty shell. A street is not a street without people ... it is as dead as mutton. It had to be a combination of the two - the mills and the people - and the composition was incidental to the people. I intend the railways, the factories, the mills to be a background' (taped interview with Gerald Cotton and Frank Mullineux, see Judith Sandling & Michael Leber, L.S. Lowry The Man and his Art, Salford, 1993, p. 17).
Lowry broached the subject of the mill at several points during his life. An earlier mill scene of 1917-18 is comparatively devoid of people; the scene is largely articulated by imposing buildings and architectural forms that have the effect of overshadowing the figures present. This domination of architecture over the figures implies the enslavement of Lowry's people to the industry that employs them during a period of increased industrialisation in the north of England. Indeed, the present work is a scene of impetuous activity and movement.
Lowry is painting here in a very impressionistic manner - loosely applied paint in undiluted blocks of colour using short brush strokes. This immediate technique creates a sense of urgency and spontaneity absent in earlier compositions on the same theme. The technique itself takes on a kinetic force, producing a blurred vision which has the effect of propelling the people along their individual paths, anonymous automotons in this industrialised society.
The high viewpoint priviledges the viewer who is voyeuristically removed from this scene of drudgery. Lowry invites the viewer to observe the street world of the north of England. The success of the image lies in its empiricism and accute observations of humanity. Lowry rarely painted topographically accurate urban landscapes, rather he assembled elements which he had perceived directly to create composite images of recognisable forms. In this scene though, it is the people who fascinate Lowry and provide the main focus of interest. 'The buildings were there and I was fascinated by the buildings. I had never seen anything like them before, but I was fascinated by the people who lived and worked in them. A country landscape is fine without people, but an industrial set without people is an empty shell. A street is not a street without people ... it is as dead as mutton. It had to be a combination of the two - the mills and the people - and the composition was incidental to the people. I intend the railways, the factories, the mills to be a background' (taped interview with Gerald Cotton and Frank Mullineux, see Judith Sandling & Michael Leber, L.S. Lowry The Man and his Art, Salford, 1993, p. 17).