Industrial Realism L.S Lowry

Laurence Stephen Lowry (1887-1976)

Lowry took a realistic, gritty approach to his environment. In Clark and Wagner’s book, Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life” (2013), (written to coincide with an exhibition I saw at Tate Britain), they make the point that,

“Lowry is a rarity in his century. In a sense he stands alone………He said it himself on several occasions, “My ambition was to put the industrial scene on the map because nobody had done it, nobody had done it seriously.”

(Quoted by Clark and Wagner at p. 37)

I have also watched two videos, the first a BBC Documentary from 1957 featuring Lowry himself, and the second, a Tateshot, 2013 (to go with the launch of the Tate exhibition).

In the 1957 film, Lowry was keen to point out that that he makes works from his imagination, based on direct observation over many years. He paints by “building up scenes from a blank canvas”, saying, that he depicts the Northern landscape “as I see it”.

This is an important point, because so many artists do not want to paint such scenes. They prefer, as Sharma says, to see only the picturesque.

Lowry’s paintings, below, show the doom and gloom he faced daily in his job as a rent collector. As T.G. Rosenthal points out, in his book, L.S. Lowry, The Art and the Artist (2010), Lowry is held in high regard for depicting the reality of his times and the cultural forces which existed in the northern industrial heartland. Most of the scenes feature landscape which is man-made, and the impact of it.

This aspect resonates with my images of the industry around us, and how it is often disregarded, despite being inextricably embedded in our modern environment.

L.S. Lowry, Street Hawker, 1929, oil on canvas, Private collection (Copyright, The Estate of L.S. Lowry)

L.S. Lowry, Industrial Landscape Wigan, 1925, oil on canvas, Private collection (Copyright, The Estate of L.S. Lowry)