Critical Review
Created after an oil painting from 1965 of the same name, Man Holding Child is a lithograph from 1974 by L. S. Lowry. The print shows a line of people standing in front of a wall, with some others peaking their heads up behind the wall, depicted in Lowry’s distinct figurative style.
Lowry shows a great variety of people in this print; children playing, ladies chatting to one another, elderly people in their winter coats, and even some dogs in the very foreground of the image, all well-known motifs used by the artist in his paintings. Though rendered without much detail, each figure appears distinctly unique with their own character traits. Man Holding Child is a print that is indicative of Lowry’s fascination with people and their unique qualities or quirks, prompting the viewer to look at the human presence in his famous landscape paintings differently.
Much like many of Lowry’s scenes, this print is depicted in a limited palette of muted colours. Lowry often claimed to use just five colours in his paintings, vermillion, ivory black, Prussian blue, yellow ochre and flake white. By only using white in the background and stripping the scene of any context, this print forces the viewer to contemplate the figures in the image, who they are and why Lowry has chosen to paint them.
