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Lot Essay
The site of the Improved Industrial Dwellings and the former Salford Royal Hospital on Oldfield Road, Salford, were an important source of inspiration for L.S. Lowry. The dwellings had originally been built in 1893 as two four-storey blocks of housing for the city's manual workers, with two shops joined by a gateway, with one end of the buildings facing the hospital. The dwellings were demolished during the 1960s.
Lowry wrote of this street, 'I'd stand for hours on just this spot ... and scores of little kids who hadn't had a wash for weeks would come and stand round me'. These were the families of the mill workers and Lowry was their rent collector, and his daily involvement in their lives would have given him very good knowledge of their personal and financial circumstances, yet, the poverty of such a setting is not apparent in the present work, painted during the year of the General Strike (see J. Sandling and M. Leber, Lowry's City A Painter and his Locale, Salford, 2000, p. 55).
Forrest Hewit (1870-1956) the previous owner of the present work, the director of the Calico Printers Association, was a figure and landscape painter who studied under Sickert. He was a regular exhibitor at various institutions between 1925-40, including the New English Art Club, the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of British Artists.
Lowry wrote of this street, 'I'd stand for hours on just this spot ... and scores of little kids who hadn't had a wash for weeks would come and stand round me'. These were the families of the mill workers and Lowry was their rent collector, and his daily involvement in their lives would have given him very good knowledge of their personal and financial circumstances, yet, the poverty of such a setting is not apparent in the present work, painted during the year of the General Strike (see J. Sandling and M. Leber, Lowry's City A Painter and his Locale, Salford, 2000, p. 55).
Forrest Hewit (1870-1956) the previous owner of the present work, the director of the Calico Printers Association, was a figure and landscape painter who studied under Sickert. He was a regular exhibitor at various institutions between 1925-40, including the New English Art Club, the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of British Artists.