L.S. LOWRY, THE CART, SIGNED OFFSET LITHOGRAPH PRINTED IN COLOURS, EDITION OF 850
The Cart is one of Lowry’s occasional completely simplistic, minimal pieces. The vastness and space of the road and two figures against a neutral sky is an arresting scene. It was inspired by a view of a road in Denbigh. Although different from his bustling Manchester cityscapes, Lowry’s departure from industrialism isn’t a true departure. His first works were landscapes - often mistakenly labelled as a self-taught artist, Lowry in fact studied under Adolphe Valette, who was a French Impressionist. ‘I cannot overestimate his effect on me,’ Lowry later said. Lowry could never be defined as an Impressionist per se, but the tradition of classical landscape often reappears in some of the more serene, peaceful scenes he painted. The landscape depicted in The Cart is a lonely one, like that in many of the rural pictures. Even though there are two men and a horse, each figure is isolated, leaning away from each other and enveloped in the sweeping curves of the road.
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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.”
