Laurence Stephen Lowry, R.A.

Alex. Reid and Lefevre, London, where acquired by the present owner's family in the late 1940s

The board is sound and is very slightly bowed. There is some old frame abrasion about the edges with some minor flecks of resultant paint loss. There are a few scattered light areas of paint separation, which are only visible upon close inspection. The paint surface is dirty and may benefit well from a light clean. Under ultraviolet light, there appear to be no signs of retouching.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Lowry's street paintings of the 1930s have an intensity in their presentation of incident that is quite distinctive, even within his oeuvre. Whilst the paintings of the previous decade had laid the foundations for what would come to be seen as the archetypal Lowry image, it was in the 1930s that these elements were brought together and began to pulse with life.

As is often the case in Lowry's work, these developments are often seen in his drawings before his paintings, and many of those drawings from the early to mid-1920s, such as A Quarrel of 1925 (Private Collection) are filled with the kind of densely populated street incidents that appear in some of his best paintings in the next decade. In these paintings, such as The Fever Van (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool), we are immediately aware that we are close in to the action, down in the street, watching with interest just like everyone else. This more intimate feeling is heightened by the settings, which as here, offer us that curious sense of the claustrophobia of those industrial districts which had grown exponentially in the nineteenth century. Workshops and lodging houses stood cheek by jowl, older buildings increasingly dwarfed by the huge forms of the mills and the smoking chimneys. In a period when the mill's workforce would almost all live within a few streets, and when the population density, poor housing and living conditions were at dreadful levels, the potential for incident was high.

The Street Brawl, like all great Lowry paintings, captures a moment. A fight has broken out just outside a building, perhaps a cheap lodging house, and we see the thrash of arms and the sharp movement not only of the protagonists but also those nearby who step in quickly to part them. However this flashpoint is isolated in the group immediately around them; the rest of the street just looks on. Clearly the event is sufficiently commonplace for a number of passers-by to just carry on their way, a brief look satisfying their curiosity. The masterly observation of the three men propping up the wall on the left of the painting is a perfect counterbalance to the hub of activity around the fight, but it also reminds us that this is still a world in the wake of the Depression, where skilled men often found work only by the day, if at all.

In spite of the drama of the fight, the huge and looming presence of the mill in the distance stands as a constant reminder, as if any were needed, that these are lives lived in thrall to it. At this period, Lowry was still grounding the architecture of his street scenes in the reality of the areas of Manchester and Salford where such scenes were to be found, such as Ancoats and Pendlebury. However, having found the basic forms, we see that he is already prepared to trim, extend or otherwise refashion these buildings to suit his purposes, prefiguring his great industrial panoramas of the 1950s. The mill that stands here, dominating the vista, with its domed tower appears again and again in Lowry's paintings throughout his career, and probably has its genesis in the large Acme Mill in an area of Pendlebury known locally as Stump Park. However, it was the people who lived in these areas that captivated the artist.