The Contraption L S Lowry

L.S. LOWRY, THE CONTRAPTION, SIGNED OFF SET COLOUR LITHOGRAPH, EDITION OF 750, 1975

The inspiration for The Contraption came from the driver of the vehicle once having shouted abuse at Lowry. Intrigued, Lowry followed it down the street, since it seemed another despicable object of the modern town like the mills and the scenes of poverty that attracted him. Once he had painted the picture, he never saw the man or the contraption again - Lowry never drove and famously walked or took trains wherever he went. He had a street eye view of his subject and he was very much a part of his world. He lived in Manchester, worked as a rent collector and never married or had children. Although he had a normal job and mixed with the people he observed, Lowry worked every day after his shift finished. Once called a Sunday painter he retorted ‘I’m a Sunday painter who paints every day of the week!’ The contraption is a strange picture inspired by a single moment in a life of wandering around a place the artist knew like the back of his hand. 

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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.