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Lot Essay
At the beginning of his career, L.S. Lowry drew the rural parts of Lancashire that he had closely observed since his childhood on walks out into the countryside beyond the Salford suburbs. Many locations are depicted in early drawings, such as Lytham, Clifton, Pendlebury, Swinton Moss, Worsley Moss, and Fylde. Although his industrial paintings are the most well known in his output, the rural landscapes permeate his oeuvre from the very beginning to the end of his long career. In Lancashire Farm, perhaps based on a farm that Lowry knew and regularly visited, we are presented with a composite format on which the artist based many of his rural scenes.
The present work, painted in 1960, recalls a scene from the earlier years of the artist’s life. A figure travels in a horse-drawn cart down a long country lane leading to an imposing farmhouse set within fields and positioned among several barns and outbuildings. On the horizon, a small group of figures can be discerned, and although the farm appears to be very isolated, nevertheless, it exudes a sense of community and belonging. The cart travelling towards the group evokes a feeling of home-coming and the predominance of green in the composition, together with the warmth of the buildings and fence posts feels fresh and welcoming. In distinct contrast to his paintings of lonely houses and empty landscapes painted during the 1930s, Lowry emphasises here that the farm is a hive of industry with its tidy buildings, well-tended fields, and symmetrical trees, just as his urban landscapes highlighted the hustle and bustle of workers teaming into and out of the mills and factories of his youth.
In describing an earlier composite farm landscape, A Lancashire Farm (private collection, sold in these Rooms, 21 March 2023, lot 45), the critic, Tom Rosenthal considered that ‘the overall effect is wintry, although not chilling. It is at once a realistic recording version of a common sight, made beautiful as he makes his mill scenes beautiful, by Lowry’s vision mined out of unpromising working environments’ (T.G. Rosenthal, L.S. Lowry, The Art and the Artist, Norwich, 2010, p. 251).
The present work, painted in 1960, recalls a scene from the earlier years of the artist’s life. A figure travels in a horse-drawn cart down a long country lane leading to an imposing farmhouse set within fields and positioned among several barns and outbuildings. On the horizon, a small group of figures can be discerned, and although the farm appears to be very isolated, nevertheless, it exudes a sense of community and belonging. The cart travelling towards the group evokes a feeling of home-coming and the predominance of green in the composition, together with the warmth of the buildings and fence posts feels fresh and welcoming. In distinct contrast to his paintings of lonely houses and empty landscapes painted during the 1930s, Lowry emphasises here that the farm is a hive of industry with its tidy buildings, well-tended fields, and symmetrical trees, just as his urban landscapes highlighted the hustle and bustle of workers teaming into and out of the mills and factories of his youth.
In describing an earlier composite farm landscape, A Lancashire Farm (private collection, sold in these Rooms, 21 March 2023, lot 45), the critic, Tom Rosenthal considered that ‘the overall effect is wintry, although not chilling. It is at once a realistic recording version of a common sight, made beautiful as he makes his mill scenes beautiful, by Lowry’s vision mined out of unpromising working environments’ (T.G. Rosenthal, L.S. Lowry, The Art and the Artist, Norwich, 2010, p. 251).