Name: Mill Scene
Brand: L S Lowry
Rating: 5 (236 reviews)

Track auction value trend

The value of L S Lowry's Mill Scene (signed) is estimated to be worth between £1,950 and £2,900. This lithograph print, created in 1972, has shown consistent value growth with an auction history of 25 total sales since its entry to the market in September 2005. In the last 12 months, the average selling price was £1,679 across 3 sales. Over the past five years, the hammer price has varied from £1,300 in March 2024 to £3,550 in September 2023. The average annual growth rate of this work is currently -8%. The edition size of this artwork is limited to 750.

Meaning & Analysis

In Mill Scene, dogs, figures, lampposts and smoke all bend against the inhospitable landscape, evoking a stormy day outside the dark Satanic Mill. The ominous atmosphere of the painting is reinforced by the artist’s gloomy, reduced colour palette. Lowry only used five colours: Ivory Black, Vermillion, Prussian Blue, Yellow Ochre and Flake White. Despite the subject matter and composition, the scene doesn’t necessarily evoke a depressing atmosphere - there is beauty in the bleakness and a sense of vibrancy through the mass of people roaming the industrial city streets. The buildings jump out in brick red from a white smoggy sky, smoke rises from the chimneys, and there is a faded city looming in the background. Lowry famously found his subject after overlooking and even despising the scenes he came to obsessively depict. Outside a mill just like the one in Mill Scene he said, “I watched this scene – which I’d look at many times without seeing – with rapture.”