L.S. LOWRY, MILL SCENE, SIGNED OFFSET LITHOGRAPH PRINTED IN COLOURS, EDITION OF 750, 1972
In Mill Scene, dogs, figures, lampposts and smoke all bend against the inhospitable landscape, evoking a stormy day outside the dark Satanic Mill. The ominous atmosphere of the painting is reinforced by the artist’s gloomy, reduced colour palette. Lowry only used five colours: Ivory Black, Vermillion, Prussian Blue, Yellow Ochre and Flake White. Despite the subject matter and composition, the scene doesn’t necessarily evoke a depressing atmosphere - there is beauty in the bleakness and a sense of vibrancy through the mass of people roaming the industrial city streets. The buildings jump out in brick red from a white smoggy sky, smoke rises from the chimneys, and there is a faded city looming in the background. Lowry famously found his subject after overlooking and even despising the scenes he came to obsessively depict. Outside a mill just like the one in Mill Scene he said, “I watched this scene – which I’d look at many times without seeing – with rapture.”
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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.
