LAURENCE STEPHEN LOWRY, R.A. (1887-1976)

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£ 126 000
Auction dateClassic
20.10.2022 13:00UTC +01:00
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CHRISTIE'S
Event location
United Kingdom, London
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ID 831380
Lot 120 | LAURENCE STEPHEN LOWRY, R.A. (1887-1976)
LAURENCE STEPHEN LOWRY, R.A. (1887-1976)

Teenagers

signed and dated 'L S LOWRY 1971' (lower right)

oil on board

8 7/8 x 6 1/4 in. (22.6 x 15.6 cm.)

Painted in 1971.





Provenance

with Lefevre Gallery, London.

Anonymous sale; Moore Allen & Innocent, Cirencester, 17 November 2002, where purchased by the present owner.



Special notice


Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.



Post lot text

Before the war, Laurence Stephen Lowry had concentrated on the industrial buildings in his art and the people that he painted in his cityscapes were small and lacking much particular detail, often even reduced to flecks of paint from his brush, to convey a sense of urgency in the monotony of their grinding daily lives. As the city changed after post war regeneration, Lowry began to focus on and to feature the people instead. Gradually increasing in size and status, by the time Teenagers was painted, Lowry’s figures are large and detailed enough to feature as the subject of a painting.

The urban landscape becomes just a frame around the people who stand confidently in the centre of his paintings, with the side or edge of a building used to position them, and the single line of a pavement to ground them. These people now represent the urban scene, and the mood is effortlessly conveyed to the viewer by the flick of a brush, or in the position of their conversational groups. Lowry wrote 'I see lots of people everywhere, myself, one lot going one way and the other lot going the opposite way as a rule' (see S. Rohde, L.S. Lowry, A Biography, Salford, 1999, p. 318).

In the present work, Lowry paints the teenage girls against a richly textured flake-white ground, throwing them into immediate relief. By occupying almost the entirety of the painting’s support, Lowry asks us to notice them and to contemplate their universe - to concentrate on these three particular teenagers and to observe their relationship, their interaction. In this group of conversational characters, Lowry presents a focused vignette of city life in all its daily bustle.
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