Footnotes

Provenance
With The Lefevre Gallery, London
Max Bygraves, O.B.E
His sale; Christie's, London, 11 November 1988, lot 475
With David Messum, London, from whom acquired by the present owner prior to April 1989
Private Collection, U.K.

In 1964, when asked by a group of students from Stafford College of Art what has impressed him more than anything else, Lowry replied simply "People every time" (Shelly Rohde, L.S. Lowry, A Life, 2007, Haus, London, p.228).

People, their characters, habits, oddities and eccentricities lie at the heart of Lowry's work from his formative to his final years. This aspect of Lowry's output is perhaps at its sharpest in the stand alone figurative pictures that emerge in the 1950s and subsequently become one of his dominant practices. In these usually small scale works people, either single or grouped, are presented with either the scantest suggestions of environment. Through deft yet rich brushwork Lowry masterfully captures individual gesture and, by way of his characteristic melancholic wit, recalls witnessed moments of amusement. These scenes are often steeped in ambiguity, and as with the present work, purposefully vague in their titling. In Four Figures and a Dog Lowry does not comment on the dynamic of our group. Perhaps we, like the dog with its back turned to us, are observing a family in mild dispute. Perhaps two adult acquaintances, their restless children bored of the conversation. Or perhaps just four strangers at a chance crossing of paths. Decoding these pictures may be key to their appeal to us but as Lowry insisted, conclusions are best avoided; "I'm not trying to say anything. I have no message at all – it's simply my way of looking at things" (ibid).

Max Bygraves O.B.E (1922-2012), the veteran entertainer perhaps best known for the Singalongamax series of LPs and as a regular fixture on British television in the 1970s, assembled a collection of L.S. Lowry oils including The Old Middlesbrough Town Hall (1962), Lady with a Dog and a Half (1963) (both later Frederick Forsyth collection), Four People and a Dog (1957) as well as the present lot.