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Lot Essay
`Steps and things ... I liked doing steps, steps in Ancoats ... steps in Stockport ... steps anywhere you like, simply because I like steps and the area which they were in was an industrial area. I did a lot, you see. I've never found it interesting to paint pure landscapes. I'm not interested in pure landscapes. I've done a few'.
(L.S. Lowry talking to Dr H. Maitland, J. Sandling and M. Leber, Lowry's City A Painter and his Locale, Salford, 2000, p. 60).
Ancoats, the world's first industrial suburb, had stood at the very heartland of the industrial revolution and by the end of the 19th Century was the most overpopulated area of Manchester. Standing to the north of the city, its cotton mills, relics from its industrial past, were well known to Lowry as were the mill workers who populated the local housing in the vicinity of the mills, and were his tenants. Thomas Street was a regular spot where Lowry made sketches in his breaks between collecting rents from the terraces which stood all around the mill.
The waste ground around the churches and the mills and the pavements in front of the terraces became a playground for children to spend their time and for friends and neighbours to congregate, in such a densely populated space, devoid of dedicated leisure spaces. Consequently, Lowry's views of Ancoats are usually populated by such folk, but he was also drawn to the detail of the Victorian viaducts, bridges, pavements, as well as to the street furniture. These features were characteristic of the industrial past and were elements of the landscape that Lowry clung to and to which he would continually seek to return for the rest of his lifetime, even after post war regeneration of the city had cleared these terraces and replaced them with modern structures.
In the present work, the presence of the solitary street light, positioned to illuminate the way up the steps beyond, together with the iron handrails which line the walls, and the street drain to the left of the composition, are important features of this landscape for the artist. In this composition they serve to draw our attention to the stillness of the city, usually so densely populated by figures, giving us another viewpoint into Lowry's fascination with the streets and buildings which had captured his imagination decades earlier. The symbol of the street lamp is a beacon of hope to light the way for the challenges of life that must be overcome, and the steps ahead disappear away from the viewer, leading into the unknown and the unpredictable. As Michael Howard has commented on the symbolism of elements, such as the street lamp and flights of steps that frequently appear in his work, `Lowry's art becomes a continuing meditation on certain fundamental themes, driven by his belief that the world of appearances could be used to express symbolically his own inner states' (M. Howard, Lowry: A Visionary Artist, Salford, 2000, p. 211).
(L.S. Lowry talking to Dr H. Maitland, J. Sandling and M. Leber, Lowry's City A Painter and his Locale, Salford, 2000, p. 60).
Ancoats, the world's first industrial suburb, had stood at the very heartland of the industrial revolution and by the end of the 19th Century was the most overpopulated area of Manchester. Standing to the north of the city, its cotton mills, relics from its industrial past, were well known to Lowry as were the mill workers who populated the local housing in the vicinity of the mills, and were his tenants. Thomas Street was a regular spot where Lowry made sketches in his breaks between collecting rents from the terraces which stood all around the mill.
The waste ground around the churches and the mills and the pavements in front of the terraces became a playground for children to spend their time and for friends and neighbours to congregate, in such a densely populated space, devoid of dedicated leisure spaces. Consequently, Lowry's views of Ancoats are usually populated by such folk, but he was also drawn to the detail of the Victorian viaducts, bridges, pavements, as well as to the street furniture. These features were characteristic of the industrial past and were elements of the landscape that Lowry clung to and to which he would continually seek to return for the rest of his lifetime, even after post war regeneration of the city had cleared these terraces and replaced them with modern structures.
In the present work, the presence of the solitary street light, positioned to illuminate the way up the steps beyond, together with the iron handrails which line the walls, and the street drain to the left of the composition, are important features of this landscape for the artist. In this composition they serve to draw our attention to the stillness of the city, usually so densely populated by figures, giving us another viewpoint into Lowry's fascination with the streets and buildings which had captured his imagination decades earlier. The symbol of the street lamp is a beacon of hope to light the way for the challenges of life that must be overcome, and the steps ahead disappear away from the viewer, leading into the unknown and the unpredictable. As Michael Howard has commented on the symbolism of elements, such as the street lamp and flights of steps that frequently appear in his work, `Lowry's art becomes a continuing meditation on certain fundamental themes, driven by his belief that the world of appearances could be used to express symbolically his own inner states' (M. Howard, Lowry: A Visionary Artist, Salford, 2000, p. 211).