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Lot Essay
Painted in 1948, the present work shows a classic Lowry combination of a busy street scene coupled with the highly characterful architecture of the north of England. Lowry came to know the houses and other building of his locale very well in his day-to-day life as a rent collector for the Pall Mall Property Company, where he worked from 1910 until his retirement in 1952. Lowry made sketches of buildings that interested him and these would be worked up into oils, painted over a long period of time, often painted at night and often showing a composite view, as is probably the case in Old Houses, where Lowry could pick and choose the elements that most appealed to him. The viewer is taken through the picture as the view recedes towards a church and a grey hazy industrial outline. There are many familiar motifs shown in the present work with the unmistakeable palette, the dogs, the broken fence (which Lowry adopted to keep his distance from some compositions and to allow the viewer to spectate the scene), as well as the arch-topped doorways and bustling figures.
The title of the present work is indicative of the artist's interest in the rundown, dilapidated houses lining cramped, urban streets with secretive windows shielding dark rooms beyond. He commented, 'I'm attracted to decay, I suppose; in a way to ugliness too. I seem to have a strong leaning towards decaying houses in deteriorated areas. They are symbols of my mood. They are myself' (see S. Rohde, The Lowry Lexicon; an A-Z of L.S. Lowry, Salford, 2001). Indeed, just three years after Old Houses was painted, Maurice Collis, Lowry's biographer, suggested that there was a comparison between buildings such as these and the artist himself, 'The windows are sometimes like his eyes, sometimes like his whole face as it would be represented in an abstract style. The half-human houses watch the scene with mournful detachment' (see M. Collis, The Discovery of L.S. Lowry, London, 1951, p. 22).
The title of the present work is indicative of the artist's interest in the rundown, dilapidated houses lining cramped, urban streets with secretive windows shielding dark rooms beyond. He commented, 'I'm attracted to decay, I suppose; in a way to ugliness too. I seem to have a strong leaning towards decaying houses in deteriorated areas. They are symbols of my mood. They are myself' (see S. Rohde, The Lowry Lexicon; an A-Z of L.S. Lowry, Salford, 2001). Indeed, just three years after Old Houses was painted, Maurice Collis, Lowry's biographer, suggested that there was a comparison between buildings such as these and the artist himself, 'The windows are sometimes like his eyes, sometimes like his whole face as it would be represented in an abstract style. The half-human houses watch the scene with mournful detachment' (see M. Collis, The Discovery of L.S. Lowry, London, 1951, p. 22).