L. S. LOWRY, A NORTHERN TOWN, SIGNED LITHOGRAPH, EDITION OF 75, 1969
L. S. Lowry’s lithograph A Northern Town was made towards the end of the artist’s career in 1969. A Northern Town shows a view looking down the street of a small town with many stylised figures dotted throughout the centre of the composition. This is a lithograph of a drawing by Lowry, rendered in black line against the cream paper.
Initially trained under the Impressionist master, Adolphe Valette, Lowry was interested in recording the nuances of everyday life and would sketch during the day to record his observations of the world around him. A Northern Town is one such study, maintaining a sketchy quality as though executed quickly from life. During his prolific career, the artist produced over 8,000 drawings.
This print is exemplary of Lowry’s direct and distinctive style that led art critic Jonathan Jones to name the artist as a ‘modern primitive’. Lowry’s stylised figures form the focal point of A Northern Town and are noted for the way in which they cast no shadows. Perfectly in line with Lowry’s stylised realism that he is so famed for, in this print the figures appear almost like silhouettes, dotted across the scene.
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ABOUT L. S. LOWRY
L.S. Lowry is a much-loved British painter known for pictures that capture urban life in industrial north west England, most notably during the 1920s. Born in 1887 in Stretford, Lancashire, Laurence Stephen Lowry later moved to Pendlebury near Manchester where he lived and worked for over 40 years. The area, which he at first detested, was covered in factories and cotton mills that Lowry would soon obsessively depict. His fascination with the industrial landscapes and the people that inhabited them was inspired by a missed train. Standing on the platform at Pendlebury station, Lowry would later write of the view of the Acme Spinning Company’s mill, saying “I watched this scene – which I’d look at many times without seeing – with rapture.” Learn more about L. S. Lowry.
