Laurence Stephen Lowry R.A.

(British, 1887-1976)

Factory Scene 11.5 x 13.4 cm. (4 1/2 x 5 1/4 in.)

Footnotes

Provenance
Sale; Sotheby's, London, 6 February 1985, lot 470
With Richard Green Gallery, London, December 1987, where acquired by the present owners
Private Collection, U.K.

Literature
T.G. Rosenthal, L.S. Lowry: The Art and the Artist, Unicorn Press, Norwich, 2010, p.283 (col.ill.)

Painted in 1960, Factory Scene encapsulates on an intimate scale the very essence of L.S. Lowry's enduring vision of industrial Britain and possesses all the vitality, humanity and rhythmic energy that define his most celebrated compositions. Although modest in size, Factory Scene is a fully resolved composition. Lowry often produced these small-scale oils with the same deliberation as his larger works, seeing them as complete statements in miniature. They were, in his own words, "paintings that come to life despite their size — where everything falls into place, just so".

By this date, Lowry was widely recognised as one of Britain's most distinctive painters, celebrated for his depictions of the industrial North — its factories, mills, and terraced streets animated by the pulse of working life. In Factory Scene, the artist condenses that world into a miniature panorama: smoking chimneys and the factory façade stand firm against a pale, diffused sky whilst a throng of figures bustle outside the gates with a sense of purposeful movement. The painting demonstrates Lowry's remarkable ability to evoke atmosphere and narrative through economy of means and his typically restricted palette using white, black and brick red is enlivened here by subtle tonal modulations, creating both depth and luminosity. Factory Scene exemplifies Lowry's distinctive compositional balance — the tension between architectural solidity and human fragility, the harmony of pattern and life.

The subject of industry remained central to Lowry throughout his career. "People say to me, why do you always paint factories?" he once remarked. "Because they are part of the people — they're part of life." By 1960, the industrial landscape he had chronicled for decades was already beginning to fade. Works such as Factory Scene therefore serve as both record and elegy — tributes to a vanishing world rendered with clarity, compassion and restraint.