Laurence Stephen Lowry R.A.

(British, 1887-1976)

Ardens Farm, Swinton 27.9 x 38.1 cm. (11 x 15 in.)

Footnotes

Provenance
Possibly Sale; Sotheby's, London, 17 March 1976, lot 86 (as Ardens Farm Moss Lane Swinton)
With Henry Donn Gallery, Manchester
With Halcyon Gallery, London
With Neptune Fine Art, Derbyshire, where purchased by the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.

This exemplary 1930 pencil drawing by Lowry was executed the same year he produced a series of small, heavily worked rural landscapes depicting various locations in The Cotswolds which were commissioned by his friend Harold Timperley to illustrate A Cotswold Book, published by Jonathan Cape in 1931. In total twelve drawings were reproduced which beautifully illustrate Lowry's capacity for conveying the essence of the English countryside. They include such gems as A Cotswold Barn and Brockhampton. When considering the quality of this set of drawings along with Ardens Farm, Swinton it might come as a surprise to learn of Lowry's thoughts about being away from his normal urban environment. Shelley Rohde quotes a 1929 letter from Lowry to Harold Timperley in her biography of the artist:

'Lowry indeed had made no secret of his inability to appreciate conventional beauty. "To my loss, country lanes have been foreign to me somewhat for quite a while past – for alas my recreation seems to have developed into drifting amongst all the back streets etc, I can come across. I don't know what your Naturalistic Nature will think of an outlook like that!"' (Shelley Rohde, L.S. Lowry, A Biography, Lowry Press, Salford Quays, 1999, 171)

The very dark shading and outlines of the buildings, farm cart and hedge in Ardens Farm, Swinton is highly characteristic of Lowry's pencil drawings of the late 1920s and early 1930s. His skies from this period are loaded with atmosphere by the expert use of subtle cross-hatching, smudging and rubbing away so that they exude a marvellous sense of light, as seen in the present lot.

It is interesting to note that there are at least three other known examples of Lowry's Ardens Farm, Swinton, all painted in oil; a very early and dark oil on board dated circa 1909, painted when the artist was just twenty-two (collection of The Lowry, Salford), a small oil on panel (date unknown) (Bonhams sale; Bonhams, London, 14 November 2012, lot 4) and a fully realised oil on canvas titled A Lancashire Farm, painted in 1944 (illustrated in T.G. Rosenthal, L.S. Lowry the Art and the Artist, Unicorn Press, Norwich, p.251). Swinton and Pendlebury, lying on the northern outskirts of Salford, would have been easily accessible to Lowry.