A Landmark, 1936

Oil on canvas

In Lowry’s ‘lonely landscapes’, as he called them, natural forms are often reduced to simple overlapping shapes rather like a stage set. Silent and unwelcoming, these landscapes seem still and airless. Although their initial inspiration may lie in the landscape of Cumbria or the Peak District, they are ultimately imagined scenes whose abstracted forms also echo those of the female nude. In the 1930s, looking after his mother after his father’s death, Lowry described many of his paintings as being a way of ‘letting off steam’. His lonely landscapes reveal much about his state of mind at the time - ‘All the paintings of that period were done under stress and tension and they were all based on myself’.