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Lot Essay
The Empty House, 1958, shares its title with a much earlier work painted by Lowry, dating from 1934, and now in the collection of Stoke-on-Trent City Museum and Art Gallery. Lowry's fascination with the subject of loneliness and isolation is expressed in these depictions of solitary buildings.
In his early monograph on Lowry, Maurice Collis commented that Lowry's solitary houses can be read metaphorically: 'It is possible to carry further this identification of his subjects with himself by looking more closely at his houses. The windows are sometimes like his eyes, sometimes like his whole face as it would be represented in an abstract style. The half human houses watch the scene with mournful detatchment. This variation of the theme of the solitary, where Lowry is not only the figures in a scene but becomes a presence watching it, is suggested at times by the composition alone. For instance, it is a common thing to find a barrier in the foreground of his pictures - railings, posts or the like - as if he were looking on from behind a barrier, which he could not pass' (see The Discovery of L.S. Lowry, London, 1951, p. 22).
In the present work Lowry has included a solitary figure and dog, standing in front of, and dwarfed by, the structure of the house beyond. It is difficult to tell whether the figure is heading towards the house and walking away from it. Lowry has chosen to depict him standing still, as if caught between the two actions, himself an isolated figure.
The motif of a solitary, and sometimes derelict, house recurs throughout Lowry's work and mirrors the loneliness that he felt in life. Michael Howard comments, 'Lowry's fondness for single structures, whether towers, monuments, standing stones or churches, is evident; he related their eccentric survival in an alien environment to his own lack of purpose. However, it could be argued that for Lowry the most potent building was not the church, or even the mill, but the isolated house. The solitary house - tenantless, haunted, empty or derelict - was a recurring theme in Lowry's art from his earliest years. In 1950, Lowry showed Maurice Collis a derelict house on the Oldham Road, saying, 'I have learnt much from that old house'. Such places may be characterised by what the Germans call unheimlich (unhomely), a term used by Freud to express the unnatural condition of a house when it has ceased to operate as a home. Its associations of warmth, shelter and a mother's love are lost. Almost ten years after the death of his mother, he moved to Mottram-in-Longdendale, where he lived for the rest of his life; his house in the village became in effect little more than a studio and base for his peripatetic roaming around the British Isles' (see Lowry: A Visionary Artist, Salford, 2000, pp. 152-3).
In his early monograph on Lowry, Maurice Collis commented that Lowry's solitary houses can be read metaphorically: 'It is possible to carry further this identification of his subjects with himself by looking more closely at his houses. The windows are sometimes like his eyes, sometimes like his whole face as it would be represented in an abstract style. The half human houses watch the scene with mournful detatchment. This variation of the theme of the solitary, where Lowry is not only the figures in a scene but becomes a presence watching it, is suggested at times by the composition alone. For instance, it is a common thing to find a barrier in the foreground of his pictures - railings, posts or the like - as if he were looking on from behind a barrier, which he could not pass' (see The Discovery of L.S. Lowry, London, 1951, p. 22).
In the present work Lowry has included a solitary figure and dog, standing in front of, and dwarfed by, the structure of the house beyond. It is difficult to tell whether the figure is heading towards the house and walking away from it. Lowry has chosen to depict him standing still, as if caught between the two actions, himself an isolated figure.
The motif of a solitary, and sometimes derelict, house recurs throughout Lowry's work and mirrors the loneliness that he felt in life. Michael Howard comments, 'Lowry's fondness for single structures, whether towers, monuments, standing stones or churches, is evident; he related their eccentric survival in an alien environment to his own lack of purpose. However, it could be argued that for Lowry the most potent building was not the church, or even the mill, but the isolated house. The solitary house - tenantless, haunted, empty or derelict - was a recurring theme in Lowry's art from his earliest years. In 1950, Lowry showed Maurice Collis a derelict house on the Oldham Road, saying, 'I have learnt much from that old house'. Such places may be characterised by what the Germans call unheimlich (unhomely), a term used by Freud to express the unnatural condition of a house when it has ceased to operate as a home. Its associations of warmth, shelter and a mother's love are lost. Almost ten years after the death of his mother, he moved to Mottram-in-Longdendale, where he lived for the rest of his life; his house in the village became in effect little more than a studio and base for his peripatetic roaming around the British Isles' (see Lowry: A Visionary Artist, Salford, 2000, pp. 152-3).