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Lot Essay
Painted in 1964, the present work is a quintessential Lowry scene that embodies the artist’s pre-occupation for portraying the industrial landscapes of the North. Captured on an intimate scale, A Mill Scene, Wigan is permeated with the unstoppable collective movement of a crowd congregating, from all directions, on their way to work at the mill. Rendered with an incredible sense of dynamism, figures can been seen as they arrive through the entrance of the mill, dissolving into the smog of the city as they march away into the distance.
Although Lowry painted from memory and many of his industrial landscapes are constructs of multiple different locations, it is likely that the present work depicts Trencherfield Mill, a cotton spinning mill that still stands to this day. This particular composition is an enduring scene within the oeuvre of L.S. Lowry, and examples of this subject can be found as early as 1941.
Lowry expands on his portrayal of the people who populate his paintings, explaining that his intentions were devoid of any political connotations: ‘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 were 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 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’ (L.S. Lowry quoted in M. Howard, Lowry, A Visionary Artist, Salford, 2000, p. 123). It is, however, undeniable that the reduction of these figures to Lowry’s painterly visual language serves as a powerful metaphor for the de-humanising effects of the industrial process, and contributes to the vivid portrayal of the industrial landscape.
A Mill Scene Wigan was painted after the first owner, Mr Arthur Hunter, challenged Lowry to prove that he had not lost his ability to capture crowds with the same vitality as he did in his earlier work. Hunter, who commissioned the painting for his daughter, Mrs Lois Leroy, later received the following letter from the artist: ‘If you are interested and it isn’t too late, I have got a small Industrial Scene I could show you next Monday 10th. If you could manage to call sometime in the morning’ (L.S. Lowry, private correspondence with A.E. Hunter, 9 August 1964). Indeed, it is clear that Lowry exceeded his patron’s expectations with A Mill Scene, Wigan, which exemplifies Lowry’s interests in the crowds from his earlier work whilst exploiting the mature style that the artist had perfected by this point in his career.
Although Lowry painted from memory and many of his industrial landscapes are constructs of multiple different locations, it is likely that the present work depicts Trencherfield Mill, a cotton spinning mill that still stands to this day. This particular composition is an enduring scene within the oeuvre of L.S. Lowry, and examples of this subject can be found as early as 1941.
Lowry expands on his portrayal of the people who populate his paintings, explaining that his intentions were devoid of any political connotations: ‘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 were 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 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’ (L.S. Lowry quoted in M. Howard, Lowry, A Visionary Artist, Salford, 2000, p. 123). It is, however, undeniable that the reduction of these figures to Lowry’s painterly visual language serves as a powerful metaphor for the de-humanising effects of the industrial process, and contributes to the vivid portrayal of the industrial landscape.
A Mill Scene Wigan was painted after the first owner, Mr Arthur Hunter, challenged Lowry to prove that he had not lost his ability to capture crowds with the same vitality as he did in his earlier work. Hunter, who commissioned the painting for his daughter, Mrs Lois Leroy, later received the following letter from the artist: ‘If you are interested and it isn’t too late, I have got a small Industrial Scene I could show you next Monday 10th. If you could manage to call sometime in the morning’ (L.S. Lowry, private correspondence with A.E. Hunter, 9 August 1964). Indeed, it is clear that Lowry exceeded his patron’s expectations with A Mill Scene, Wigan, which exemplifies Lowry’s interests in the crowds from his earlier work whilst exploiting the mature style that the artist had perfected by this point in his career.