Laurence Stephen Lowry, R.A. (1887-1976)

Figure groups became a popular subject for Lowry's drawings in the 1950s. Mervyn Levy comments (Drawings of L.S. Lowry, London, 1963, p. 22), 'In any town or city you will find men and women, everywhere, who are as incredible in appearance as the most bizarre of Lowry's types. It is simply that, as in the figures of the man and woman, he has halted their incredibleness and pinned it securely upon the paper so that we can study it at leisure. It is of course an essence of the grotesque and the lonely, that he has distilled; but it is as essence we each of us carry through the world. If the fact hurts, it is only life that hurts. It is better to laugh'.