Laurence Stephen Lowry, R.A.

Stone Gallery, Newcastle, 1967, where purchased by the family of the present owners

Newcastle, Stone Gallery, L.S. Lowry Recent Drawings and Paintings, 11th March - 8th April 1967, cat. no.14.

Original canvas. There is some minor frame abrasion with small associated losses to the extreme edges of the work, not visible when framed. There is a small area of paint loss at the lower right corner of the girl at the right of the composition's skirt. On extremely close examination it is possible to see some areas of very light surface dirt. With the exception of this the painting appears to be in very good condition. Ultraviolet light reveals no obvious signs of retouching. The work is presented in an ornate gilt frame. Please contact the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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'All those people in my pictures, they are all alone. They have got all their private sorrows, their own absorption. But they can't contact one another. We are all of us alone - cut off. All my people are lonely. Crowds are the most lonely thing of all. Everyone is a stranger to everyone else. You have only got to look at them to see that' (L.S. Lowry, quoted in Julian Spalding, Lowry, London, 1987, p.51).

Although Lowry's interest in the figure is evident throughout his career it was not until the late 1950s and 60s that he began to abandon his signature crowd scenes in favour of small groups of people rendered with a more highly developed sense of individual identity. Indeed, during this time Lowry's figures become of such central importance that in works such as Family Group he begins to place them not against an urban backdrop, but simply against a white void so that the subject of the painting becomes the figures alone, or, crucially, the nebulous atmosphere inhabiting the spaces between them.

Himself often awkward in social situations, Lowry observed with fascination the human interactions of urban life and recorded time and again the various encounters that he came across. Yet, rarely, if ever, do we detect any sense of togetherness or companionship amongst his characters. In fact his depictions of groups often emit a greater air of loneliness and isolation than the paintings of lone individuals. The present work is a case in point – in the clear disconnect between the central figures, who are labelled a family by Lowry, making their disengagement with one another all the more poignant. The mother and daughter hold hands, but their gazes do not meet. A second daughter, faceless, back to us, leans in, apparently eager to engage with the circle from which she has been excluded. The mother and father’s poses echo one another, but they are physically separated by the children, perhaps articulating their emotional distance. The son stares out blankly at the viewer, and even the family dog remains detached, his interest elsewhere.

There is no doubt that Lowry's fascination with the notion of loneliness was intimately tied to an acute awareness of his own isolation and that his paintings can often be considered as a metaphor for his own relationships. As Michael Howard has suggested, Lowry would paint these types almost as a therapeutic act, 'as a means of populating his own loneliness, and also as a kind of ritual act that would keep the monsters at bay.' (Michael Howard, Lowry: A Visionary Artist, Lowry Press, Salford Quays, 2000, p.171). As with his landscapes, which are rarely, if ever, topographically accurate, Lowry's paintings of people are not just records of contemporary life but are heavily imbued with the artist's emotional response to their, and, in fact, to his own situation. Lowry succeeds in holding up a magnifying glass to the uncomfortable reality of the human condition and highlighting the inadequacy of so many of life's social interactions. It is this combination of 'portraiture' and psychological statement that lends a timeless resonance to his work and instills so much of his apparently mundane subject matter with an uncommon profoundness.