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Lot Essay
‘I believe that every human creature is an island, and I feel that I can best give voice to this belief by taking single figures and presenting them as solitarily as I possibly can. That is why they are often adrift in areas of white loneliness’ (L.S. Lowry, quoted in exhibition catalogue, The Loneliness of Lowry, Kendal, Abbott Hall Art Gallery, 2010, p. 10).
Man in a Trilby, 1960, is a haunting example of the single, lonely isolated figures that Lowry turned to painting in the early 1960s. These can be seen to echo those of the 1930s, when Lowry, faced with the sudden death of his father Robert Lowry in 1932, became the sole carer of his bed-bound mother and responsible for his father’s sizeable debts. During this period Lowry became increasingly withdrawn and detached from the world, and turned to his art for solace, painting a series of desolate figures, whose intensity echoed the force of Lowry’s despair. These feelings were escalated by the death of his mother in 1939, who died ‘uncomprehending and unhappy to the end’, who, ‘refused to recognise what others now freely acknowledge; that her son was a great artist’ (S. Rohde, L.S. Lowry A Biography, Salford, 1999, pp. 211-213).
This sense of separation was reflected in Lowry’s pictures and can be seen to powerful effect in Man in a Trilby. Lowry stated, ‘All those people in my pictures, they are all alone you know. They have got their private sorrows, their own absorption. But they can’t contact one another. We are all of us alone – cut off. All my people are lonely. Crowds are the most lonely thing of all. Everyone is a stranger to everyone else. You have only got to look at them to see that’ (L.S. Lowry, quoted in exhibition catalogue, op. cit., p. 58).
Lowry was fascinated by those who were described as odd or misfits, drawn to their sadness. Lowry explained, ‘They are real, sad people. I am attracted to sadness and there are some very sad things. I feel like them’ (L.S. Lowry, quoted in S. Rohde, op. cit., pp. 368-369). In the 1960s, Lowry’s pictures of his single figures, often termed ‘grotesques’, took on a greater psychological weight, suggesting the ‘gap between the interior emotions and the external form’ (M. Howard, Lowry: A Visionary Artist, Salford, 2000, p. 163). Michael Howard explains, ‘Elements of the grotesque are a constant theme in Lowry’s art, and as he advanced in years so his fascination with the odd and bizarre grew more apparent until it became not only one of the dominant motifs of his work, but was also used by the artist himself and others as a means of defining his own personality’ (M. Howard, ibid., p. 162).
Man in a Trilby, and Lowry’s other figure paintings of the time, can be seen as semi-self-portraits, with common physical characteristics frequently repeated, such as the hair parted to the left, gaunt faces and wide staring eyes. Here the vestments of the figure are reminiscent of the artist’s own clothes – the trilby hat and the long dark coat. These pictures have also been identified as psychological portraits, with the artist’s emotions resonating through his works. Lowry stated, ‘I wanted to paint myself into what absorbed me. Natural figures would have broken the spell of it, so I made my figures half unreal … They are part of a private beauty that haunted me’ (L.S. Lowry, quoted in exhibition catalogue, op. cit., p. 11).
Man in a Trilby, 1960, is a haunting example of the single, lonely isolated figures that Lowry turned to painting in the early 1960s. These can be seen to echo those of the 1930s, when Lowry, faced with the sudden death of his father Robert Lowry in 1932, became the sole carer of his bed-bound mother and responsible for his father’s sizeable debts. During this period Lowry became increasingly withdrawn and detached from the world, and turned to his art for solace, painting a series of desolate figures, whose intensity echoed the force of Lowry’s despair. These feelings were escalated by the death of his mother in 1939, who died ‘uncomprehending and unhappy to the end’, who, ‘refused to recognise what others now freely acknowledge; that her son was a great artist’ (S. Rohde, L.S. Lowry A Biography, Salford, 1999, pp. 211-213).
This sense of separation was reflected in Lowry’s pictures and can be seen to powerful effect in Man in a Trilby. Lowry stated, ‘All those people in my pictures, they are all alone you know. They have got their private sorrows, their own absorption. But they can’t contact one another. We are all of us alone – cut off. All my people are lonely. Crowds are the most lonely thing of all. Everyone is a stranger to everyone else. You have only got to look at them to see that’ (L.S. Lowry, quoted in exhibition catalogue, op. cit., p. 58).
Lowry was fascinated by those who were described as odd or misfits, drawn to their sadness. Lowry explained, ‘They are real, sad people. I am attracted to sadness and there are some very sad things. I feel like them’ (L.S. Lowry, quoted in S. Rohde, op. cit., pp. 368-369). In the 1960s, Lowry’s pictures of his single figures, often termed ‘grotesques’, took on a greater psychological weight, suggesting the ‘gap between the interior emotions and the external form’ (M. Howard, Lowry: A Visionary Artist, Salford, 2000, p. 163). Michael Howard explains, ‘Elements of the grotesque are a constant theme in Lowry’s art, and as he advanced in years so his fascination with the odd and bizarre grew more apparent until it became not only one of the dominant motifs of his work, but was also used by the artist himself and others as a means of defining his own personality’ (M. Howard, ibid., p. 162).
Man in a Trilby, and Lowry’s other figure paintings of the time, can be seen as semi-self-portraits, with common physical characteristics frequently repeated, such as the hair parted to the left, gaunt faces and wide staring eyes. Here the vestments of the figure are reminiscent of the artist’s own clothes – the trilby hat and the long dark coat. These pictures have also been identified as psychological portraits, with the artist’s emotions resonating through his works. Lowry stated, ‘I wanted to paint myself into what absorbed me. Natural figures would have broken the spell of it, so I made my figures half unreal … They are part of a private beauty that haunted me’ (L.S. Lowry, quoted in exhibition catalogue, op. cit., p. 11).