L. S. LOWRY, INDUSTRIAL PANORAMA, SIGNED LITHOGRAPH, EDITION OF 300, 1972
Industrial Panorama is a print from 1972 by L. S. Lowry based on a painting of the same name from 1953, showing an imaginary industrial landscape characterised by unusual hills and smokestacks. Representing Lowry’s late painterly style, this print emphasises the drabness of the industrial landscape rather than the isolation of its inhabitants that was typical of his earlier works.
Though this scene is inspired by the artist’s real-life observations of working class lives in industrial towns, Industrial Panorama shows a general impression of the urban environment created from memory. As an example of Lowry’s late style, this print is particularly dream-like with his depiction of rolling hills and industrial buildings seemingly growing out of the landscape. There seems to be no distinction between the natural and the industrial in this scene, notably as we see smoke from the mills fade into the sky and clouds, and the way in which landscape and buildings are rendered as though merging into one another.
Lowry shows the landscape to overwhelm the tiny people that populate the street, unlike many earlier prints that show his figures in the foreground of the image. The viewer feels a familiar sense of hopelessness, what art historian John Rothenstein calls ‘a kind of gloomy lyricism’, as Lowry shows the working classes to be subject to the environment that they were born into.
Discover more L.S. Lowry artworks.
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.
