Seascape

Here the title, Seascape, strikes a somewhat odd note. In so far as it is of rocks and water and ends with a distinct, distant horizon it manifestly is a seascape. But it has much less in common with Lowry's many other seascapes, whether inhabited by ships or whether near abstract painting of marine emptiness. Where it fits, with almost uncanny precision, in Lowry's oeuvre, is with his compelling versions of lakes where the water is fenced in by rocks or hills and where those rocks and hills are intensely erotic in shape. A perfect example of this effect is The Lake of 1951 where the rocky surrounds of the water are distinctly erotic in form conjuring up a profusion of breasts and buttocks.

In fact Seascape almost carries this type of imagery to its furthest conclusion with the five different rock faces clearly suggesting the prone female body, front submerged in water, and the rear view, with the buttocks eliding into a shapely back. Give the unusual landscape shape and dimensions of the board it is probably not too wild a supposition that in this case, as happened quite often with Lowry, the painting seen here and manifestly of high quality, might have been cut out of a much larger, possibly more ambitious work, meant to fit in with his similar lakescape opposed to seascape paintings. But that is simply conjecture concerning what Whistler might have called A Study in Black and White. In all ways this is an unusual Lowry but also typical of a particular strand of his work and a high grade example of that strand.

T.G.R.