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Lot Essay
Typical of Lowry's industrial scenes, The Day Shift is a composite landscape, which Lowry would have built up over an initial ground of flake white paint. The main focus of the painting is the Acme Spinning Company Mill, which was opened in 1905, and Lowry claimed was the reason he became interested in the industrial scene.
One day, when Lowry had missed a train from Pendlebury the mill caught his attention: '... as I got to the top of the station steps I saw the Acme Spinning Company's mill, the huge black framework of rows of yellow-lit windows stood up against the sad, damp-charged afternoon sky. The mill was turning out hundreds of little pinched, black figures, heads bent down, as though to offer the smallest surface to the swirling particles of sodden grit, were hurrying across the asphalt, along the mean streets with the inexplicable derelict gaps in the rows of houses, past the telegraph poles, homewards to high tea or pubwards, away from the mill and without a backward glance. I watched this scene - which I'd looked at many times without seeing - with rapture' (see J. Sandling and M. Leber, Lowry's City: A Painter and his Locale, Salford, 2000, p. 17).
Lowry has included typical motifs in this painting, such as the imaginary domed tower, the tall gateposts topped with large round balls and the smoking chimneys. The crowd of people, that Lowry has depicted, surge towards the towering gateposts and, to emphasise this movement, Lowry has included two figures in the foreground, and one behind the crowd, walking in the opposite direction.
Lowry commented, 'The buildings were there and I was fascinated by the buildings. I had never seen anything like them before. But I was fascinated by the people who lived and worked in them. A country landscape is fine without people, but an industrial set without people is an empty shell. A street is not a street without people ... it is as dead as mutton. It had to be a combination of the two - the mills and the people - and the composition was incidental to the people. I intend the railways, the factories, the mills to be a background' (see exhibition catalogue, Lowry, Middlesbrough, Cleveland Art Gallery, 1987, p. 31).
One day, when Lowry had missed a train from Pendlebury the mill caught his attention: '... as I got to the top of the station steps I saw the Acme Spinning Company's mill, the huge black framework of rows of yellow-lit windows stood up against the sad, damp-charged afternoon sky. The mill was turning out hundreds of little pinched, black figures, heads bent down, as though to offer the smallest surface to the swirling particles of sodden grit, were hurrying across the asphalt, along the mean streets with the inexplicable derelict gaps in the rows of houses, past the telegraph poles, homewards to high tea or pubwards, away from the mill and without a backward glance. I watched this scene - which I'd looked at many times without seeing - with rapture' (see J. Sandling and M. Leber, Lowry's City: A Painter and his Locale, Salford, 2000, p. 17).
Lowry has included typical motifs in this painting, such as the imaginary domed tower, the tall gateposts topped with large round balls and the smoking chimneys. The crowd of people, that Lowry has depicted, surge towards the towering gateposts and, to emphasise this movement, Lowry has included two figures in the foreground, and one behind the crowd, walking in the opposite direction.
Lowry commented, 'The buildings were there and I was fascinated by the buildings. I had never seen anything like them before. But I was fascinated by the people who lived and worked in them. A country landscape is fine without people, but an industrial set without people is an empty shell. A street is not a street without people ... it is as dead as mutton. It had to be a combination of the two - the mills and the people - and the composition was incidental to the people. I intend the railways, the factories, the mills to be a background' (see exhibition catalogue, Lowry, Middlesbrough, Cleveland Art Gallery, 1987, p. 31).