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Lot Essay
Although Lowry's townscapes may contain references to known or specific buildings and structures, usually nothing is particularised. They are generic scenes and lack the many features that would identify specific parts of the city. We also find little in the way of advertising hoardings, traffic, buses and lorries. In fact there is very little differentiation, from one painting to another, between the buildings, the pubs, streets, monuments and churches. Each conforms to a type (see M. Howard, Lowry A Visionary Artist, Salford, 2000, p. 150).
Howard also comments that, 'The scale of his figures bears no relation to the usual readings of perspectival space; the roads that move into the background of his pictures remain singularly disrespectful of the most basic rules of perspective, and fenestration refuses to match up with the notional spaces inside his depicted buildings' (op. cit. p. 149). It is this conflict which gives his extremely prosaic subjects such a spectral quality.
Howard also comments that, 'The scale of his figures bears no relation to the usual readings of perspectival space; the roads that move into the background of his pictures remain singularly disrespectful of the most basic rules of perspective, and fenestration refuses to match up with the notional spaces inside his depicted buildings' (op. cit. p. 149). It is this conflict which gives his extremely prosaic subjects such a spectral quality.