Footnotes

Provenance
With Lefevre Gallery, London
Ivan Aird
With Trident Gallery, Leicester, where acquired by the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.

Within L.S Lowry's much loved and varied output, the genre of 'Street Scene' is one perhaps held dearest in the public zeitgeist. As pictures, for both the artist and the viewer, their power lies in the immediate familiarity and the endless variation they offer.

By the 1950s the urban landscape that Lowry knew so well was changing. Industrial decline and post-war regeneration meant the loss of some of the painters favoured factory buildings and mill-scape views. Additionally, his retirement as a rent collector and clerk for the Pall Mall Property Company in 1952 and increasing commercial success as an artist – afforded him both time and means to travel, which he did extensively and exclusively within the British Isles.

As a roaming artist Lowry looked for familiar and rewarding subjects, and in the ubiquitous and unique streets he wandered up and down the land he found just what he was seeking. The result is a series of exceptional pictures of the 1950s and 1960s which together provide a portrait of the nation's streets. These works are connected by a strong sense of perspective which a view along a street provides, the interest Lowry found in contrasting buildings – domestic, municipal and industrial – and above all his fascination with the people who dwelled within them.

To observe the many figures denoted in the present composition, Lowry did not need to roam far. Old Road in Failsworth is a stone's throw from the Artist's home in nearby Mottram. Both of which are in Greater Manchester, the part of the world which is most intertwined with Lowry's artistry. As a subject this particular street yielded two paintings of 1957, a composition which matches the architecture of the present drawing closely, also entitled Old Road, Failsworth and an alternative view entitled Children Playing, Old Road, Failsworth.