Mervyn Levy (L.S. Lowry, Royal Academy Exhibition Catalogue, London, 1987, p.64) comments on an earlier treatment of this subject, 'Family Group' from 1936, 'it illustrates in particular the problem of 'communication'. Or rather the inability of people to communicate, more especially perhaps in the close-knit context of the family unit.
It is an essay in the language of the inarticulate ... The subject strikes both sociological and personal notes; indicating the eternal isolation of the individual both in relation to himself and to the community in which he is always so precariously suspended'