Harold Riley (b. 1934)

'This small oil depicts a red house painted in scarlet vermillion which was Lowry's favourite colour. It stood in the district of Seedley in Salford. Lowry and I both painted it and on the occasion of our last visit, he looked at my picture and said "Compositionally, it needs something there" and pointed to the bottom right hand corner. He then flicked in the two figures and the dog and said, "I never have problems with composition, Sir, I simply put it in the middle"'
(Private correspondence with Dr Harold Riley, October 2014).