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

This, the earliest of the Lowry works in the Selwyn Demmy Collection, is already at this stage of his career, showing several of the later more obsessive characteristics of his art. While apparently a finished drawing it has a typically odd provision of windows, i.e. just one on a side wall of this substantial house with none on the large, indented wall which, in relation to the houses's setting, could be either front or back.

The copse of the fully-grown trees perfectly illustrates the military maxim that any tree which is not a conifer is, by definition, a 'bushy-top tree' for purposes of either map-reading or the selection of targets. It is, on the whole a somewhat bleak picture but it is redeemed in terms of cheer, by the classical miniature group of woman and two small children walking along the road. In its fluency and its topographical skill it looks forward to the commissioned drawn illustrations for the 1931 Jonathan Cape publication A Cotswold Book (see lot 44).

There is a similar drawing of the same title in the City of Salford Art collection.

T.G.R.