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拍品专文
This scene evokes an atmosphere of ambiguity and loneliness amidst a bustling urban landscape. A central group of four figures is flanked by the dark walls of an alley. In the wider space, suggestions of the city beyond dissolve into the heavy ground of flake white saturating the scene. The dominance of white negative space blends foreground and background, while restless figures appear to float in this dreamlike non-space.
Lowry stated in 1943 that ‘if I was asked my chief recreation, I ought to say walking about the streets of any poor quarter of any place I happen to be in’ (L.S. Lowry, quoted in M. Leber and J. Sandling, L.S. Lowry, Oxford, 1987, p. 17). This pastime was abetted by his 40 year career as a rent collector for the Pall Mall Property Company, but the vast visual library accrued from four decades of walking the streets of Manchester and Salford was also central to his artistic practice. He drew on it to create true-to-life street scenes in identifiable locations, as well as composite landscapes distilling the essence of the industrial city. The present work leans towards the composite approach, but the recollection is indistinct and the details obscured. The blurring of the background in a volumetric haze of flake white gives the barest hint of civic architecture while also reflecting Lowry’s preoccupation with the smoggy industrial environment beyond. This theme is further implied by the smokestacks rising above the roofline to the left of the composition.
Street Scene’s other-worldly quality is heightened by the figures’ positioning and interaction within the space. Lowry’s scenes often teem with life, centred around a defined event or moment. Furthermore, whether streaming out of factory gates or attending a football match, the action of Lowry’s figures is normally ‘framed, confined, dictated by the built environment’ (T.J. Clark and A.M. Wagner, exhibition catalogue, Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life, London, Tate, 2013, p. 69). Street Scene, then, is a departure; its figures and the context in which they are placed are harder to interpret. They almost seem consciously stripped of much of this life, appearing more as lost souls than singular personalities. The central group of figures has a distinct tension: a male figure looms over his female companion; the other two stand with backs turned, gazing beyond the picture plane at something invisible to us. Smaller walking figures seem to be rushing to leave, as if the image’s centre of gravity lies outside the frame. The use of perspective compounds this sense of alienation and disorientation. Lowry generally favoured an elevated angle for his compositions, but the treatment here is more complex; the buildings and central figures appear to have been painted at eye level, but the truncated figures in the foreground are seen from above. The scene’s perspectival distortions, uncanny figures and unsettling, detached atmosphere strongly recall Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s paintings of a febrile, pre First World War era Berlin, including Nollendorfplatz, 1912 and the later Straßenszenen.
Later in his career Lowry appeared to tire of painting industrial scenes, once joking that ‘the blighters keep asking for more’ (L.S. Lowry, quoted in M. Leber and J. Sandling, op. cit., p. 36). He eventually, in the early 1960s, turned to painting small groups of odd figures against plain white backgrounds, as well as empty seascapes executed while visiting the Sunderland coast. Painted in 1960, Street Scene’s atmosphere of solitude, the increased emphasis on white negative space and the enigmatic treatment of its figures foreshadow these fundamental changes to Lowry’s practice in the last years of his life.
Lowry stated in 1943 that ‘if I was asked my chief recreation, I ought to say walking about the streets of any poor quarter of any place I happen to be in’ (L.S. Lowry, quoted in M. Leber and J. Sandling, L.S. Lowry, Oxford, 1987, p. 17). This pastime was abetted by his 40 year career as a rent collector for the Pall Mall Property Company, but the vast visual library accrued from four decades of walking the streets of Manchester and Salford was also central to his artistic practice. He drew on it to create true-to-life street scenes in identifiable locations, as well as composite landscapes distilling the essence of the industrial city. The present work leans towards the composite approach, but the recollection is indistinct and the details obscured. The blurring of the background in a volumetric haze of flake white gives the barest hint of civic architecture while also reflecting Lowry’s preoccupation with the smoggy industrial environment beyond. This theme is further implied by the smokestacks rising above the roofline to the left of the composition.
Street Scene’s other-worldly quality is heightened by the figures’ positioning and interaction within the space. Lowry’s scenes often teem with life, centred around a defined event or moment. Furthermore, whether streaming out of factory gates or attending a football match, the action of Lowry’s figures is normally ‘framed, confined, dictated by the built environment’ (T.J. Clark and A.M. Wagner, exhibition catalogue, Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life, London, Tate, 2013, p. 69). Street Scene, then, is a departure; its figures and the context in which they are placed are harder to interpret. They almost seem consciously stripped of much of this life, appearing more as lost souls than singular personalities. The central group of figures has a distinct tension: a male figure looms over his female companion; the other two stand with backs turned, gazing beyond the picture plane at something invisible to us. Smaller walking figures seem to be rushing to leave, as if the image’s centre of gravity lies outside the frame. The use of perspective compounds this sense of alienation and disorientation. Lowry generally favoured an elevated angle for his compositions, but the treatment here is more complex; the buildings and central figures appear to have been painted at eye level, but the truncated figures in the foreground are seen from above. The scene’s perspectival distortions, uncanny figures and unsettling, detached atmosphere strongly recall Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s paintings of a febrile, pre First World War era Berlin, including Nollendorfplatz, 1912 and the later Straßenszenen.
Later in his career Lowry appeared to tire of painting industrial scenes, once joking that ‘the blighters keep asking for more’ (L.S. Lowry, quoted in M. Leber and J. Sandling, op. cit., p. 36). He eventually, in the early 1960s, turned to painting small groups of odd figures against plain white backgrounds, as well as empty seascapes executed while visiting the Sunderland coast. Painted in 1960, Street Scene’s atmosphere of solitude, the increased emphasis on white negative space and the enigmatic treatment of its figures foreshadow these fundamental changes to Lowry’s practice in the last years of his life.