Beschreibung:

Laurence Stephen Lowry R.A. (British, 1887-1976)Man Looking at Something
signed 'L.S. LOWRY' (lower right) and dated '1961' (lower left)
oil on board
21 x 18.8 cm. (8 1/4 x 7 3/5 in.)FootnotesProvenance
With Tib Lane Gallery, Manchester, where acquired by the family of the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.
Prior to the 1960s, during which decade Man Looking at Something was painted, L.S. Lowry had enjoyed great commercial success with his industrial landscapes and had developed a formidable reputation with a dedicated following. However, the artist's interests began to change and his powerful panoramas of the working north that had occupied so much of his output gave way to more focused and intimate observations of the people who had populated them at a distance. This change can be partly aligned with the wider developments in Britain whose factories, canals and terraced streets were disappearing, either destroyed in the Second World War or cleared in a frenzy of post-war development. When speaking to Frank Mullineux, Lowry commented 'The strangest thing is that when the industrial scene passed out in reality, it passed out of my mind, I could not do it now, I have no desire to do it now, and that would show' (L.S. Lowry, quoted in T.G. Rosenthal, L.S. Lowry: The Art and the Artist, Norwich, 2010, p.139).
People, their characters, habits, oddities and eccentricities lie at the heart of Lowry's work from his formative to his final years. This aspect of his output is perhaps at its sharpest in the closely observed figurative pictures that emerged during the 1950s and 1960s and subsequently became one of his dominant and favoured practices. In these usually small-scale works, people, either single or grouped, are presented with the scantest suggestions of environment. Through deft yet rich brushwork Lowry masterfully captures individual gesture and by way of characteristic melancholic wit, recalls often witnessed moments of amusement.
The present such example depicts a man in the centre of the composition with his hands in the pocket of his heavy coat, sturdy boots fitted and the subtle hint of a red scarf around his neck. He appears to have stopped in his tracks and stares intently outside of the picture plane at something we cannot see ourselves. The title of the work offers no further hints and is typically vague, with the outline of two additional and similarly attired men standing alongside him enhancing the ambiguity of the moment. Michael Howard has commented that 'his people are individualised in a way that his earlier inhabitants of the urban scene were not. Unlike his industrial figures, they are not set in a specifically urban framework; the world they inhabit is nebulous, uncertain and empty, as mysterious and ambiguous as they are themselves' (Michael Howard, Lowry: A Visionary Artist, Lowry Press, Salford, 2000, p.195).