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Lot Essay
Lowry said: "I wanted to paint myself into what absorbed me [...] Natural figures would have broken the spell of it, so I made my figures half unreal. Some critics have said that I turned my figures into puppets, as if my aim was to hint at the hard economic necessities that drove them. To say the truth, I was not thinking very much about the people. I did not care for them in the way a social reformer does. They are part of a private beauty that haunted me. I loved them and the houses in the same way: as part of a vision."
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. In the late 1950s and 60s Lowry abandoned his signature crowd scenes in favour of small groups of people rendered with a more highly developed sense of identity. In these paintings his figures are not presented against an urban setting but instead seem to float on a white void. This can be seen in Group of Six People. The background of this work is a nebulous and uneasy environment in which the lost six figures appear to float. There is a great air of isolation and loneliness. Two figures in the background of the composition share a common fascination with the central male figure. The others do not appear to be able to communicate and perhaps are not even aware of one and other.
As with his landscapes, which are rarely, if ever, topographically accurate, Lowry's paintings of people are not just scenes of contemporary life but are heavily imbued with the artist's emotional response to them. Lowry succeeds in holding up a magnifying glass to the uncomfortable reality of the human condition and highlights 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 instils so much of his essentially mundane subject matter with an uncommon profundity.
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. In the late 1950s and 60s Lowry abandoned his signature crowd scenes in favour of small groups of people rendered with a more highly developed sense of identity. In these paintings his figures are not presented against an urban setting but instead seem to float on a white void. This can be seen in Group of Six People. The background of this work is a nebulous and uneasy environment in which the lost six figures appear to float. There is a great air of isolation and loneliness. Two figures in the background of the composition share a common fascination with the central male figure. The others do not appear to be able to communicate and perhaps are not even aware of one and other.
As with his landscapes, which are rarely, if ever, topographically accurate, Lowry's paintings of people are not just scenes of contemporary life but are heavily imbued with the artist's emotional response to them. Lowry succeeds in holding up a magnifying glass to the uncomfortable reality of the human condition and highlights 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 instils so much of his essentially mundane subject matter with an uncommon profundity.