Laurence Stephen Lowry

Alex. Reid & Lefevre, London
Crane Kalman Gallery, London, whence acquired by Mr. R. Lyons, 26th January 1969
Acquired by the present owner in the early 1970s

London, Crane Kalman Gallery, The Loneliness of L.S. Lowry, 7th - 30th November 1968, cat. no.33, pl.XXII as "A Street Scene".

Faint stretcher marks are visible along each edge,otherwise the canvas is in good original condition. There are a couple of spots of surface matter, one in the second window down along the upper right edge, which may be the artist's hand. The surface is slightly dirty, otherwise, the paint surface is in good overall condition. Under ultraviolet light, there are three small areas to the left of the man's head which have been stabilized with some tiny flecks of retouching. There are some further tiny flecks in the sky and to the man's umbrella where old lifting paint has been stabilized. Held in a painted composition frame with canvas mount. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 5381 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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In November 1968, the Crane Kalman Gallery held an important exhibition of Lowry's work, The Loneliness of L.S. Lowry. Concentrating on the paintings of landscape, seascape and other subjects away from the familiar industrial townscapes, it was not the first time such works had been seen but it was the first time a major show had been dedicated to them. The effect was revelatory and encouraged a further understanding of the artist and his connection with his work.

The present work was included in that exhibition, although under a different title, and it is easy to see why it was selected. A solitary figure stands in the middle of a winding road, bordered on each side with high brick walls. Beyond these walls, and at the end of the road, are unmistakeably industrial buildings, including a tall central chimney and the winding gear of a pithead. Everything towers above the figure, who, even in his mode of dress, looks out of place. He is not the mufflered worker walking to his job, he is a smarter figure with an umbrella, but he is nevertheless dwarfed by the buildings around him. At the end of the road, a red gate leads into the factory yard. This perhaps unexpected splash of colour is reminiscent of the red gates often found in Lowry's paintings of farms in the countryside around Lytham and Fylde in Lancashire and reminds us that many of the small towns which had become fully industrialized in the nineteenth century had often grown from small rural communities, little hints of which could still be hunted out. This distant gate appears to be just slightly open, but if this is to offer us a way in it is unclear. Certainly our figure does not appear to be in any hurry to pass through the gate. Indeed, when one considers that the composition of the road, walls and buildings to the right-hand side mirror exactly the drawing St Mary's Church, Swinton (Salford Museum & Art Gallery) of 1913, one of his earliest works, perhaps he has stopped and is looking back.  

At the time when Man Walking was painted in 1960, Lowry found himself in an ambiguous situation. His reputation and recognition had grown exponentially since the late 1940s and by 1960, his position was becoming well-established but this was almost exclusively based on the popularity of his industrial landscapes. His own interest was shifting away from this subject towards paintings that were more about the people who had previously filled his street scenes, but extracted from their settings and investigated as individuals. However, he knew that it was the industrial landscapes that were popular and that he had to continue to produce such paintings to satisfy the demand. Does this position therefore offer us a small insight into the artist's position at the time? Lowry often inserts a figure into a crowd who stands a little apart from those around him, either through dress or gait, frequently giving a suggestion of the awkwardness of the self-consciously tall, and these figures have been identified as having an element of the artist about them. The figure here has many of those characteristics, and it may thus be possible to infer that there is some autobiographical factor drawn into this man, surrounded by the dominating buildings of industry and with no apparent way out. However, his pose suggests that he is standing and looking, rather than walking, and that perhaps if he was only to turn and walk away, he could leave the chimneys and manufactories behind.