L.S. Lowry

Dwelling, Ordsall Lane, Salford

1927

© The estate of L.S. Lowry

License this image

Not on display

Artist
L.S. Lowry 1887–1976
Medium
Oil paint on wood
Dimensions
Support: 432 × 533 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Purchased 1939
Reference
N05003

Display caption

Lowry was fascinated by buildings. For him they evoked the lives of their occupants. He felt that 'A country landscape is fine without people, but an industrial set without people is an empty shell. A street is not a street without people... it is as dead as mutton'. In the 1920s he frequently drew in Salford: 'There were special parts I liked, a bit Georgian, older than the rest. My favourite places were the houses built around factories. They just attracted me more than the others.' Revisiting Orsdall Lane in the 1960s Lowry remembered that as he had drawn in front of the dwelling, 'scores of little kids who hadn't had a wash for weeks would come and stand around me. And there was a niff, too.'

Gallery label, September 2004

Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.

Catalogue entry

N05003 DWELLINGS, ORSDALL LANE, SALFORD 1927
 
Inscr. ‘L. S. Lowry 1927’ b.l.
Oil on plywood, 17×21 (43×53·5).
Purchased from the artist through the Lefevre Gallery (Knapping Fund) 1939.
Exh: Lefevre Gallery, February 1939 (19); Sheffield, September–October 1962 (10).

For a study for this work see N06027. Another composition, of a speaker in the interior of a hall, is on the reverse.

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

Explore

You might like

Left Right