Laurence Stephen Lowry, R.A.

Acquired directly from the Artist by the Royal Scottish Academy in 1934
Their sale, Lyon and Turnbull, Edinburgh, 2nd June 2011, lot 190, where acquired by the late owner

Paris, Grand Palais, Salon d'Automne, 1st November - 14th December 1930, cat. no.1355;
Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, The Exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, 28th April - 1st September 1934, cat. no.229;
London, Royal Academy of Arts, L.S. Lowry, 4th September - 14th November 1976, cat. no.84;
Salford, Salford Art Gallery, L.S. Lowry Centenary Exhibition, 16th October - 29th November 1987, cat. no.118;
London, Tate, Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life, 25th June - 20th October 2013, un-numbered exhibition, illustrated, fig.30.

Michael Leber & Judith Sandling, L.S. Lowry, Phaidon Press Ltd., London, 1987, cat. no.18, illustrated p.102;
Shelley Rohde, L.S. Lowry, A Biography, Lowry Press, Salford, 1979, reprinted 1999, p.152, 154, 161, 202;
Shelley Rohde, L.S. Lowry, A Life, Haus Publishing Ltd, London, 2007, p.88, p.118.

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 evenly stretched on what would certainly appear to be the original keyed wooden stretcher. Labels have been attached to the reverse of the canvas. The structural condition is sound and secure. Paint Surface: The paint surface has the artist's original dry appearance and could benefit from surface cleaning should this be required. This would give greater depth and contrast to the paint surface as there is evidence of slight blanching, for instance in the dark pigments of the wall running up the right side of the composition. No retouchings are visible under ultra-violet light. Summary: The painting would therefore appear to be in excellent and original condition and should respond well to cleaning should this be required. Housed behind glass in a thick painted wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 66424 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."

While Lowry did on occasion take his sketch book with him on his daily rounds collecting rents, his paintings were usually done from memory, amalgamations of his observations of street life in Manchester, constructed with an artistic eye for compositional arrangement. When he identified a subject which particularly stimulated him, Lowry would often produce a painting and then return to the composition again years later, making subtle revisions and adjustments to the figures, the tonal arrangements or the architectural setting, as seen of course in in his well-known Coming from the Mill paintings. Lowry began exploring the theme of the hawker’s cart in 1921, in an oil painting which was exhibited at his first ever exhibition, held in Manchester that same year.  The present work is a version of this subject which Lowry painted in 1929. Exhibited in Paris at the Grand Palais, the work was later one of Lowry’s first major public acquisitions when it was purchased by the Royal Scottish Academy in 1934.

From early in his artistic training Lowry was an enthusiastic theatre goer and he continued throughout his life to be fascinated by the stage. It is perhaps unsurprising then that works such as The Hawker’s Cart call to mind a sense of theatricality in their emphasis on the dramas of life that,for the working classes at least, were lived publicly, played out as a show on the streets, rather than behind closed doors. In the present work, the spectacle is presented with a stage like frontality. The hawker with his donkey pulled cart attracts local characters - from the ladies out doing their daily shop, to the elderly woman in the eccentric hat - on a street reminiscent of a stage set, the tenements providing a backdrop for the players engrossed within the event.

Apart from spending his days travelling between his neighbours’ homes collecting rents, taking in the particular odd but not necessarily rare occurrences of life, Lowry also spent several days a week in the front office at The Pall Mall Company, filling out paperwork. This weekly task gave him the opportunity to observe the comings and goings on the street, and also made him approachable to his neighbours, who would pop in to say hello and discuss business. Lowry’s intimate engagement with the working class experience made him a particularly nuanced observer, able to articulate the subtle language of social placement within this community. As Anne M. Wagner eloquently observed in her essay for the recent Tate exhibition Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life, these intricate differences were something no outsider could have conveyed:

‘The same is true of the hawker on his rounds:  the man with the donkey is not to be confused with the jolly peddler of Irish folksong, “who rambles this nation” on a spending spree. Lowry’s hawkers, known as “tallymen,” were urban itinerants who sold on tick, as did the keepers of the local general stores. According to contemporary middle-class observers, merchants like these, whether standing behind a counter or walking alongside their wagons, exploited their clients’ present needs at the expense of their future wellbeing, extending credit that would never be repaid and destroying whole families when they fell into debt.’ (Anne M. Wagner, ‘Lowry, Repetition and Change,’ Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life, Tate, London, 2013, p.78)

In The Hawker's Cart, we can see the immediate effect such a presence has within the community - neighbours out to buy necessities are attracted to the cart, tempted by wares which will surely break their weekly budget. Perhaps, as Wagner goes on to conclude, this is the source of the conflict between the couple quarrelling in the foreground.