Footnotes

• PROVENANCE:
  Private Collection, U.K.
  
  Despite his move to Cornwall in 1959 Lowndes continued to paint scenes of the urban landscapes and surroundings of his youth in Stockport, for which by 1969 he had become well known in both Britain and abroad. Depicting the snowy Stockport landscape with chimneys protruding from the rooftops, the scene is full of the comic characters that populated his work. A sense of general merriment abounds in the dancing figures, and Lowndes displays his skill in theatrical staging with the embracing couple forming an interesting cameo in the bottom left hand corner that serves to frame the composition well. This embracing couple was perhaps drawn from his earlier work The Kiss (1958), formerly in the collection of the actor Charles Laughton, as the artist was fond of re-using certain themes and visual memories throughout his career. Another painting of the same year, Coming Home, Christmas Eve (1969, Private Collection) depicts a similar snowy scene, albeit with only three figures, and it is likely that the two were executed consecutively, perhaps inspired by a rare and particularly snowy winter in Cornwall that year, as seen in Rosewall Hill in Winter (1969, Private Collection).

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Category: Fine Art / Modern British and Irish Art

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