L.S. Lowry

Coming Out of School

1927

© The estate of L.S. Lowry

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In Tate Britain

Historic and Modern British Art: Reality and Dreams: 1920–1940

Artist
L.S. Lowry 1887–1976
Medium
Oil paint on plywood
Dimensions
Support: 347 × 539 mm
frame: 440 × 632 × 48 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Presented by the Trustees of the Duveen Paintings Fund 1949
Reference
N05912

Display caption

Like many of Lowry's pictures this is not a depiction of a particular place, but is based on recollections of a school seen in Lancashire. Lowry's combination of observation and imaginative power often produced images which capture a deeply felt experience of place, with which others could identify. For example, in 1939 John Rothenstein, then Director of the Tate Gallery, visited Lowry's first solo exhibition in London and later wrote: 'I stood in the gallery marvelling at the accuracy of the mirror that this to me unknown painter had held up to the bleakness, the obsolete shabbiness, the grimy fogboundness, the grimness of northern industrial England.' This work was then purchased by the Trustees.

Gallery label, April 1994

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Catalogue entry

N05912 COMING OUT OF SCHOOL 1927
 
Inscr. ‘L. S. Lowry 1927’ b.r.
Oil on plywood, 13 1/2×21 1/4 (34·5×54).
Presented by the Duveen Paintings Fund 1949.
Coll: Bought by the Duveen Paintings Fund at the ‘Daily Express’ Young Artists Exhibition 1927.
Exh: ‘Daily Express’ Young Artists Exhibition, R.B.A. Galleries, June 1927 (359).

This is not a depiction of a particular place but is based on recollections of a school seen in Lancashire (letter from the artist, 21 January 1956).

There are traces of an unfinished composition on the reverse.

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I

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