The Lake

The Lake is a lively example of Lowry’s interest in depicting scenes of daily social life. Although Lowry is perhaps best known for his industrial scenes of workers scurrying between factories, some of the artist’s most successful works depict people at leisure: watching football matches, playing on the beach at Lytham Pier, playing cricket, or enjoying boat races. While The Lake shares Lowry’s characteristic off-white pigments and simplified architectural forms, it pictures a charming lake-side scene of Mancunians rowing across the water as a series of onlookers watch. While the figures revel in this area of nature perhaps during their Sunday off, the imposing buildings beyond signal the work that needs to be continued within the confines of the factory walls. In many of Lowry’s leisure scenes, such visual symbols are used to highlight the presence of the industrial.

Lowry painted lake scenes throughout his career and the large surfaces of water allowed the artist to create vast planes of gradated white which he juxtaposed with dark patches of land. Comparing the canvas presented here to Crime Lake (1942), one can see that the latter certainly contains more menacing undertones as Lowry creates a visual pun playing on the name of the lake by displaying some suspicious behaviour taking place in the foreground. In contrast, The Lake depicts a far more serene, leisurely scene, although the dark buildings surrounding this lake scene suggest a sense of unease characteristic of Lowry's work.