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Lot Essay
L.S. Lowry’s An Old Windmill, Amlwch is an exquisite example of the artist’s landscape painting, demonstrating his versatile handling of impasto and subtle palette to create a compelling meditation on urban life within a rural environment. A broad, sweeping road leads down towards an old windmill, while ships hang in the distant sea, water and sky captured by Lowry’s distinctive chalk white mist of paint. Lowry’s painting of Amlwch, a small port on the north shore of the Isle of Anglesey, shows the stoic brick windmill as a dark landmark of paint which cuts through the grey light. Built in 1816, Almwch Port Windmill, also known as Melin y Borth Windmill, was derelict by the time the picture was painted in 1941. The windmill was a testament to both Wales’s industrial past and its economic struggles following the Great Depression. The march of telegraph poles in the middle ground show that modernity had reached even here.
Lowry’s mother, Elizabeth, had died in 1939, leaving him devastated and launching him towards landscapes which became records of ‘some of his darkest fears and anxieties’ (M. Howard, Lowry: A Visionary Artist, Salford, 2000, p. 215). The hillside is a bruise of paint, while unexpected dashes of strong colour pick out the town and the ships in the harbour. While absent of figures, the marks of red, yellow, green, blue and orange paint imply human activity, and the painting’s perspective hints at Lowry himself, walking along the road. Here, topography becomes a metaphor for Lowry’s emotions, where he is suspended between arriving and leaving. The walker looks on towards a world he observes but from which he keeps his distance.
Lowry, although forever associated with Manchester, spent substantial amounts of time in Wales. As a child, he holidayed with his family to Rhyl in North Wales, while in the 1920s he went on sketching trips with Brian and Pat Cooke. He returned in the 1960s with his friend and collector Monty Bloom. It was an environment that suited Lowry’s sensibility, wild but embedded into the rhythms of working-class life. An Old Windmill, Amlwch combines this with the coastline, one of Lowry’s fundamental subjects as an artist. Some of his earliest and latest works were of ships at sea, little flags of paint which immediately transport the viewer into the world of the painting. Here, the bobbing flecks of colour pierce the blur of Lowry’s paint, leaving us gazing into the distance.
Lowry’s mother, Elizabeth, had died in 1939, leaving him devastated and launching him towards landscapes which became records of ‘some of his darkest fears and anxieties’ (M. Howard, Lowry: A Visionary Artist, Salford, 2000, p. 215). The hillside is a bruise of paint, while unexpected dashes of strong colour pick out the town and the ships in the harbour. While absent of figures, the marks of red, yellow, green, blue and orange paint imply human activity, and the painting’s perspective hints at Lowry himself, walking along the road. Here, topography becomes a metaphor for Lowry’s emotions, where he is suspended between arriving and leaving. The walker looks on towards a world he observes but from which he keeps his distance.
Lowry, although forever associated with Manchester, spent substantial amounts of time in Wales. As a child, he holidayed with his family to Rhyl in North Wales, while in the 1920s he went on sketching trips with Brian and Pat Cooke. He returned in the 1960s with his friend and collector Monty Bloom. It was an environment that suited Lowry’s sensibility, wild but embedded into the rhythms of working-class life. An Old Windmill, Amlwch combines this with the coastline, one of Lowry’s fundamental subjects as an artist. Some of his earliest and latest works were of ships at sea, little flags of paint which immediately transport the viewer into the world of the painting. Here, the bobbing flecks of colour pierce the blur of Lowry’s paint, leaving us gazing into the distance.