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Lot Essay
Throughout his life, the sea always held a particular fascination for Lowry. In his youth, Easter holidays were spent at Lytham St Anne's on the Fylde coast, and at Rhyl, on the North West coast, during the summer. Lowry used the sea as a metaphor for universal ideas regarding the insignificance of man and the isolation of human existence. He commented, 'It's the Battle of Life - the turbulence of the sea - and life's pretty turbulent, isn't it? I am very fond of the sea, of course, I have been fond of the sea all my life: how wonderful it is, yet how terrible it is. But I often think ... what if it suddenly changed its mind and didn't turn the tide? And came straight on? If it didn't stop and came on and on and on and on ... That would be the end of it all' (see J. Spalding, exhibition catalogue, Lowry, Middlesbrough, Cleveland Art Gallery, 1987, p. 61).
In Seascape with figures Lowry has presented the composition in typically horizontal receding planes. In the foreground some figures and a dog are visible on the beach, while further beyond some yachts and a shipping vessel cut through the horizon with the sky, which is predominantly painted with Lowry's trademark flake white paint.
In Seascape with figures Lowry has presented the composition in typically horizontal receding planes. In the foreground some figures and a dog are visible on the beach, while further beyond some yachts and a shipping vessel cut through the horizon with the sky, which is predominantly painted with Lowry's trademark flake white paint.