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Lot Essay
'A poignant view of the artist's own demise, of which he said: "There'll be two people at my funeral and one of those will be the undertaker and he'll be looking at his watch to see if he'll be away in time for the match"' (Shelley Rohde, private correspondence, April 2000).
Julian Spalding comments on the present work 'the picture is harmonious but bleak, about death in life. There is a suggestion of hope in the aspiring tower of the church, but this is balanced by the black pit of the grave. Lowry was not a religious man, though he later maintained, "There must be a God. I can't believe it's all waste". The play of life and death, like two sides of a coin, is one of the main themes of Lowry's art, though he rarely treats it so mournfully or lyrically again' (J. Spalding, Lowry, London, 1987, p. 15).
Monty Bloom, the former owner of the present composition and collector of Lowry's pictures, once asked the artist if he had ever done another funeral picture, to which Lowry replied 'You only do your own funeral once, Sir' (private correspondence).
Julian Spalding comments on the present work 'the picture is harmonious but bleak, about death in life. There is a suggestion of hope in the aspiring tower of the church, but this is balanced by the black pit of the grave. Lowry was not a religious man, though he later maintained, "There must be a God. I can't believe it's all waste". The play of life and death, like two sides of a coin, is one of the main themes of Lowry's art, though he rarely treats it so mournfully or lyrically again' (J. Spalding, Lowry, London, 1987, p. 15).
Monty Bloom, the former owner of the present composition and collector of Lowry's pictures, once asked the artist if he had ever done another funeral picture, to which Lowry replied 'You only do your own funeral once, Sir' (private correspondence).