Sudden Illness

细节

Laurence Stephen Lowry, R.A. (1887-1976)
Sudden Illness
signed and dated 'L.S. LOWRY 1920' (lower left), signed and dated again and inscribed 'Sudden Illness 1920/Laurence S. Lowry/117 Station Road/Pendlebury/M/C' (on a label attached to the reverse)
oil on panel
10 x 17¾ in. (25.5 x 45.6 cm.)

来源

Purchased by Monty Bloom from the artist during the 1950s, and by descent.

出版

F. Spalding, Lowry, London, 1979, pp. 5-7, 10-11, pl. 17.
S. Rohde, L.S. Lowry a Biography, Salford, 1999, p. 152.
M. Howard, Lowry A Visonary Artist, Salford, 2000, p. 87, illustrated.

展览

Manchester, Rowland Thomasson Architects, 1921, no. 2, as 'A Man taken Ill'.
London, Hamet Gallery, L.S. Lowry, September - October 1972, no. 2, illustrated.
London, Royal Academy, L.S. Lowry, R.A., September - November 1976, no. 30.
Salford, Art Gallery, L.S. Lowry Centenary Exhibition, October - November 1987, no. 130.
Middlesbrough, Arts Council of Great Britain, Cleveland Art Gallery, The Art of L.S. Lowry, December 1987 - January 1988, no. 16, pl. 53 and back cover of catalogue: this exhibition toured to Coventry, Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, January - February 1988; Stoke-on-Trent, Art Gallery, March - April 1988; Exeter, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, April - May 1988; and London, Barbican Art Gallery, August - October 1988.

注意事项

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis

拍品专文

The present composition is a remarkable work which was first exhibited at one of Lowry's very first exhibitions and is one of his early compositions to show figures against a white background, the technique that he was to use for the rest of his life. Lowry told his close friend and would-be biographer Professor Hugh Maitland that 'it was the first time I was ever shown in public'. The exhibition lasted two weeks - and Lowry claimed later that he did not sell one picture. The exhibition is described by Shelley Rohde, the artist's biographer, 'Today many - if not all - of those unsold Lowrys of 1921 form a valued part of collections all over the world. Item No One in the catalogue was bequeathed to Salford City Art Gallery. Item No Two was a poetic oil which demonstrates some early experimentation with flake-white and is now called Sudden Illness [the present work]. Priced originally at 15 guineas, it was sold by the artist to the collector Monty Bloom in the '50s; by 1960 it's price had risen to £100 and in 1972 Bloom sold it a London Gallery for £4,000. Two days later, finding he 'missed it too much', he bought it back for £6,000. Another of those 1921 pictures, Hawker's Cart, is in the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, and Pit Disaster went to Geoffrey Bennett in Carlisle; A Doctor's Waiting Room was bought by Salford in 1959; and Coming Out of School was bought by the Duveen Fund for the Tate (see S. Rohde, op. cit., pp. 149, 152 and 154).

Lowry once remarked, 'Accidents interest me - I've a very queer mind you know. What fascinates me is the people they attract, the patterns those people form, and the atmosphere of tension when something has happened ... where there's a quarrel there's always a crowd ... It's a great draw. A quarrel or a body' (see Exhibition catalogue, L.S. Lowry, Barbican Art Gallery, London, 1988, p. 53).

Michael Howard (loc. cit.) comments that, 'this frieze-like composition is a sombre reworking in an urban setting of the beach scenes of the 19th Century French painter, Boudin, an artist much admired by Lowry'.