Critical Review
There were many important events around Lowry’s career during the execution of this painting in 1960; The Lowry Gallery opened in Salford in 1958, in 1959 Lowry had a second retrospective at Manchester Art Gallery and in 1962 he was made a full academician at the Royal Academy. Around all his fame, Lowry still worked as a rent collector and still lived with his mother. Lowry hated celebrity and was uninterested in the limelight. Looking at Ferry Boats it is easy to see that this was more inspired by the lives of others than the fortunes of himself. Lowry focuses on the crowd and composes the picture around the form of a mass of figures, in this instance boarding a ferry. There is some fondness in this picture which is missing from Lowry’s bleaker seascapes. “I’d like to live by the sea” Lowry told Liz O’Donnell, née Fitton in 1961. The punters are dressed colourfully, which is unusual in a Lowry painting and the jolly funnels and sailing ships betray an optimism rarely seen in other works of the period such as Sailing Boats.
