Breakdown under the Bridge

In the late 1950s, Lowry introduced the image of the cab into his work. Levy comments, 'It was, he said, originally inspired by a curious contraption he saw trundling the streets of Manchester, a man perched at the front and driving the vehicle by a kind of handle. It was black and narrow, with small windows at each side and at the back ... But its fortutitous appearance was important since it provided the artist with a new and impersonal image that could symbolize the passage of human life through the unending flow and mystery of existence ... There is strength and mystery, and sadness too, in this drawing of the cab moving slowly away from us into the gloom of the unknown. It is carrying the artist ...' (M. Levy, Drawings of L.S. Lowry, London, 1963, p. 22).