Laurence Stephen Lowry, R.A.

Alex. Reid & Lefevre Ltd, London, where acquired by the Educational Resource Service, Wakefield, November 1948
Their sale, Christie's London, 27th November 1997, lot 237, where acquired by the late owner

Paris, Exposition Annuelle des Beaux Arts: Salon de 1930, 143° exposition, 1930, cat. no.1381;
Manchester, Society of Modern Painters, 1931 (details untraced);
London, Alex. Reid & Lefevre Ltd, British Artists, March 1947, cat. no.3.

Manchester Guardian, 23rd February 1950, illustrated p.8 (reproduced in T.J. Clark and Anne M. Wagner, Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life, Tate Publishing, London, 2013, p.51);
Shelley Rohde, A Private View of L.S. Lowry, Butler and Tanner Ltd., Frome and London, 1979, p.109, illustrated pl.XI;
Shelley Rohde, L.S. Lowry, A Biography, Lowry Press, Salford, 1979, 1999, p.164;
Shelley Rohde, The Lowry Lexicon, The Lowry Centre Ltd, Salford, 2001, illustrated p.101;
Shelley Rohde, L.S. Lowry, A Life, Haus Publishing Ltd, London, 2007, p.111;
T.G. Rosenthal, L.S. Lowry, The Art and the Artist, Unicorn Press, Norwich, 2010, illustrated p.90;
T.J. Clark and Anne M. Wagner, Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life, Tate Publishing, London, 2013, p.51.

The following condition report has been prepared by Hamish Dewar or Hamish Dewar Ltd., 13 & 14 Mason's Yard, Duke Street, St James's, London, SW1Y 6BU. Structural Condition: The canvas is unlined and is securely and evenly stretched. Paint Surface: The paint surface would appear to have a film of surface dirt and slightly discoloured varnish and should benefit from surface cleaning. Inspection under ultra-violet light shows no evidence of any retouching. Summary: The painting would therefore appear to be in excellent and stable condition and should respond well to cleaning if required. Housed behind glass in a thin gilt and painted wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Lowry was continually fascinated by occasions which attracted a crowd and drew individual’s attention to a particular incident.  In the present work, we find ourselves indoors, a rather rare occurrence when looking at the span of Lowry’s output, the subjects of which were largely drawn from life playing out vibrantly in the Northern streets. The setting is a lobby of some sort, and the appearances of the individual figures suggests it may be a train station, several characters dressed in suits and ties, carrying briefcases, perhaps rushing to catch their morning train to work, others mill about or rest on benches, perhaps waiting for their train platforms to be called.

Lowry's title is certainly suggestive of an element of political fervour and although the artist himself was not necessarily political, it would have been impossible to avoid politics in a city shaped by legions of workers and controlled by a small clutch of industrialists. After all, Manchester staged a near-revolution over the issue of parliamentary reform with protests that ended with the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 and later, this was the place that inspired Friedrich Engels to begin the political journey that led him to co-write the Communist Manifesto in 1848.

A master of composition, Lowry draws our eye from the individuals in the foreground upwards towards the speaker - one of the politicians alluded to in the title, who articulates his viewpoint and gesticulates for his audience of potential voters. The majority of the crowds’ backs are to us, and we are pulled further into the event, eager to see what they see, moving from those who are hurrying off to some unknown destination, up through those whose attention has briefly been caught by the forming crowd, finally to the seated mass of people, who have come specifically to hear this man speak. Some particularly passionate onlookers jump up from their seats to shout out questions or argue their point. The stationary verticality of the majority of the figures also draws us to the top of the setting; you can almost feel the flow of energy, directed towards the main interaction, only one or two figures move across the lobby space horizontally, against the general ascending flow of energy.  

We can make sense of this mass of characters due to their stark articulation against the white ground. Now a hallmark of Lowry’s paintings, this white background is something which the artist began to experiment with and develop in the 1920s, making it a staple of his output in 1928, the year before the present work was painted. Lowry, on several occasions, attributed his move away from rather dark coal covered cityscapes to the critic Bernard Taylor, who reviewed Lowry’s early exhibitions, and who was also a teacher at Salford. Lowry apparently took several of his paintings of crowds to Taylor to ascertain his thoughts and suggestions. Taylor – again according to Lowry’s re-telling - held the works up to a dark wall and said ‘this will never do’ as the paintings blended into their rather dark and dank surroundings.  Apparently annoyed, Lowry went away and painted two works with figures on a white ground and took them back to Taylor- who immediately declared his enthusiasm. However accurate this tale, what was clear was Lowry began a process of experimentation using flake white to achieve his desired effect:  

‘I remember I got a piece of wood and painted it flake white six times over. Then I let it dry and sealed it up; and left it like that for six or seven years. At the end of that time I did the same thing again on another piece of board, opened up the first piece I’d painted and compared the two. The recent one was, of course, dead white; but the first had turned a beautifully creamy grey-white. And then I knew what I wanted…’ (Lowry, quoted in Shelley Rohde, L.S. Lowry, A Life, Haus Publishing Ltd, London, 2007, p.94).

Election Time was exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Francais in 1930 and at the Society of Modern Painters in Manchester a year later. The appearance of Lowry’s paintings in a range of international shows during the late 1920s and 1930s was the result of a particularly fruitful acquaintance he had made at his first show in 1921. During the exhibition he was introduced to the director of the Oldham Art Gallery, W.H. Berry, and they formed a friendship which led to a Sunday lunch invitation a few years later, where Lowry met Berry’s wife Daisy Jewell. Jewell worked as the head of framing at James Bourlet and Sons, London, and became an ardent enthusiast and supporter of Lowry’s work. It was through her insistence that his pieces were sent to Paris and Manchester, and she often wrote to Lowry to try and source new works to be exhibited. It was not for another ten years that the relationship resulted in significant financial gain, when Daisy introduced A.J. McNeil Reid to Lowry’s paintings. In 1939 Alex. Reid & Lefevre Ltd, gave Lowry his first London show, and the on-going importance of this relationship for Lowry’s career cannot be overstated, when considering the present collection for example, it is amazing to note that 10 of the 15 works were initially sold through this gallery.