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Lot Essay
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Lowry painted a number of landscapes which are reminiscent of those he painted of Lytham St Anne's in the 1920s. Like the earlier compositions, these landscapes have an apparent emptiness which, as Michael Howard writes, 'speaks poignantly of the past' (Lowry A Visionary Artist, Salford, 2000, p. 211). Motifs such as an empty road are found in these paintings, punctuated by dark hedges and trees. In Windsor Great Park, Lowry draws the viewer into the composition from the lower edge of the picture along the off-centre road, leading us down the long line of trees that lie on the horizon. From there we are drawn to the prominent Round Tower of Windsor Castle, which can be seen against the skyline with its flag flying.
While the subject and elongated format of Windsor Great Park are unusual, the compositional devices and motifs within the landscape demonstrate Lowry's distinctive and unique vision. 'Not only are such paintings convincing evocations of certain aspects of the British landscape, the lie of the land for example, and the specific qualities of the local light, but they also suggest a poetic or expressive content' (M. Howard, loc. cit., p. 212).
When discussing two paintings from this period, Edge of the Moor (1952) and Fylde (1953), T.G. Rosenthal writes, 'But, while Lowry's later landscapes, persisting well into the 1950s, were utterly unlike his cityscapes, his 'industrials', they had a style of their own ... Fylde is particularly attractive even if - or perhaps because - it is so ambiguous. At first glance it could almost be an abstract picture but it soon reveals itself as an almost limitless stretch of land, all in white with a clear, distant horizon and divided into six fields, three on each side of a road with faint outlines of exiguous pavement. The fields are divided, and enclosed, by black, drystone walls and, while this white world is uninhabited, the overall effect is not, as it might sound, a bleak one' (L.S. Lowry The Art and the Artist, Norwich, 2010, p. 249).
While the subject and elongated format of Windsor Great Park are unusual, the compositional devices and motifs within the landscape demonstrate Lowry's distinctive and unique vision. 'Not only are such paintings convincing evocations of certain aspects of the British landscape, the lie of the land for example, and the specific qualities of the local light, but they also suggest a poetic or expressive content' (M. Howard, loc. cit., p. 212).
When discussing two paintings from this period, Edge of the Moor (1952) and Fylde (1953), T.G. Rosenthal writes, 'But, while Lowry's later landscapes, persisting well into the 1950s, were utterly unlike his cityscapes, his 'industrials', they had a style of their own ... Fylde is particularly attractive even if - or perhaps because - it is so ambiguous. At first glance it could almost be an abstract picture but it soon reveals itself as an almost limitless stretch of land, all in white with a clear, distant horizon and divided into six fields, three on each side of a road with faint outlines of exiguous pavement. The fields are divided, and enclosed, by black, drystone walls and, while this white world is uninhabited, the overall effect is not, as it might sound, a bleak one' (L.S. Lowry The Art and the Artist, Norwich, 2010, p. 249).