Critical Review
L. S. Lowry’s lithograph print The Notice Board from 1975 is one of the artist’s more abstract scenes, showing a group of people walking up a hill in front of a gloomy seascape. The central focus of the print is a tall notice board that the figures gather together to look at.
This highly unusual scene, with very little context behind the notice board, encapsulates Lowry’s interest in showing the ways in which people from all walks of life gather together and where this takes place. Appearing like a scene from a dream, The Notice Board is very clearly created from Lowry’s imagination, elusive in its depiction of the sea as a backdrop, and faint depictions of sailing boats.
Characteristic of many of Lowry’s paintings, this scene is filled with a flat, white, polluted light that renders the sky and sea almost undifferentiated. The depiction of a single hill in the foreground of the image, conveys a narrative that these figures are stranded in the middle of the sea. Created late in Lowry’s career, this gives the print an atmosphere of melancholic loneliness, described by art historian John Rothenstein as ‘a kind of gloomy lyricism’, something that runs through many of the artist’s paintings of people.
