Laurence Stephen Lowry, R.A. (1887-1976)

'My wife visited Lowry one Saturday afternoon on a July day towards the end of his life. He was hunting for a picture in the backroom. As you went in he used to paint to your right sitting in a Victorian armchair. To your left there was a table stacked with paintings and drawings in folios. The room was, in Northern parlance, 'a tip'. Daphne helped him to shift some boards, dust covered, and found this study between two of them at the bottom of the pile.'

The Royal Technical College in Salford also housed the School of Art which Lowry attended on frequent occasions after he completed his basic training at Manchester. This view is from the Art School balcony at the back of what is now The Peel Building looking towards the centre of Salford; the chimney has since been demolished.

The finished drawing of this subject, described by M. Levy in the Royal Academy 1976 Retrospective as 'the pinnacle of the artist's achievement with the pencil', is in the collection of the City of Salford. Salford have two further views, one looking towards Manchester and the other towards Broughton. (See M. Levy, The Drawings of L.S. Lowry, Public and Private, London, 1976, nos. 68, 69 and 78).