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Lot Essay
Promenade captures a moment at the seaside, in which Lowry’s figures are seen to be relaxed and carefree as they ramble along the walkway with the beach below them. The viewpoint at which Lowry regards the scene is typical of his paintings: he places the viewer at a high perspective, looking down upon the scene.
Throughout his life, the sea always held a particular fascination for Lowry. He spent many of his childhood holidays in the Lancashire seaside town of Lytham St Anne’s at Easter, and at Rhyl, North Wales, during the summer months. Both Lytham St Anne's and Rhyl had developed in the late nineteenth century specially to cater for industrial workers who could afford a temporary escape from their daily drudgery. Lowry had happy memories of these days and he turned frequently to the subject of seascapes and beach scenes throughout his career.
The present work is populated by Lowry’s regular cast of characters, anonymous figures that represent the typical working class individual that Lowry knew so well from his life in Salford. Transported from the city streets to the shores of the coast, they are shown in various everyday activities, walking and talking, enjoying the natural landscape and fresh sea air and generally occupying themselves as they would in any of his urban scenes. By transporting them to the coast, Lowry conveys an alternative view of the life of these individuals, that of the relaxed holidaymaker enjoying a welcome respite from their busy, often overwhelming, lives in the city.
As Michael Howard has observed of Lowry’s beach scenes, ‘the figures walk and occupy themselves as they would in any of his urban scenes. It is in these compositions that he comes closest to the crowded but immaculately considered canvases of Brueghel. Lowry’s instinctive feel for the ebb and flow of people in the city is here translated to the beach, where the movement of the figures is counterpointed by that of the sea … He celebrates the restrained, puritanical pleasures of doing nothing, or the banal activities that mask the private pleasures of observation and contemplation’ (M. Howard, Lowry A Visionary Artist, Salford, 2000, p. 231).
Throughout his life, the sea always held a particular fascination for Lowry. He spent many of his childhood holidays in the Lancashire seaside town of Lytham St Anne’s at Easter, and at Rhyl, North Wales, during the summer months. Both Lytham St Anne's and Rhyl had developed in the late nineteenth century specially to cater for industrial workers who could afford a temporary escape from their daily drudgery. Lowry had happy memories of these days and he turned frequently to the subject of seascapes and beach scenes throughout his career.
The present work is populated by Lowry’s regular cast of characters, anonymous figures that represent the typical working class individual that Lowry knew so well from his life in Salford. Transported from the city streets to the shores of the coast, they are shown in various everyday activities, walking and talking, enjoying the natural landscape and fresh sea air and generally occupying themselves as they would in any of his urban scenes. By transporting them to the coast, Lowry conveys an alternative view of the life of these individuals, that of the relaxed holidaymaker enjoying a welcome respite from their busy, often overwhelming, lives in the city.
As Michael Howard has observed of Lowry’s beach scenes, ‘the figures walk and occupy themselves as they would in any of his urban scenes. It is in these compositions that he comes closest to the crowded but immaculately considered canvases of Brueghel. Lowry’s instinctive feel for the ebb and flow of people in the city is here translated to the beach, where the movement of the figures is counterpointed by that of the sea … He celebrates the restrained, puritanical pleasures of doing nothing, or the banal activities that mask the private pleasures of observation and contemplation’ (M. Howard, Lowry A Visionary Artist, Salford, 2000, p. 231).