Lancashire Street

A very fine and classical Northern street scene in which Lowry explores his interest in the buildings and structures that he knew from his years of walking around the city. Indeed, although Lowry's townscapes may contain references to known or specific buildings usually nothing is particularised. They are generic scenes, or `composites', and lack the many features that would identify specific parts of the city. We also find little in the way of advertising hoardings, traffic, buses and lorries. In fact there is very little differentiation, from one painting to another, between the buildings, the pubs, streets, monuments and churches. Each conforms to a type (see M. Howard, Lowry A Visionary Artist, Salford, 2000, p. 150).

Michael Howard also comments that, 'The scale of his figures bears no relation to the usual readings of perspectival space; the roads that move into the background of his pictures remain singularly disrespectful of the most basic rules of perspective, and fenestration refuses to match up with the notional spaces inside his depicted buildings' (op. cit. p. 149). It is this conflict which gives his prosaic subjects such a spectral and timeless quality.
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