Lakeside,
Sea Views and Seascapes

Lowry's seascapes vary notably in production. While some are characterised by highly realistic depictions, others are striking in their lack of details and abstraction. Oftentimes, these latter are also recognisable by a more colourful and vivid palette, which differs from the monotone and darker tones typical of his production - the artist always claimed to only use a five colours palette made by vermillion, ivory black, Prussian blue, yellow ochre and flake white. Many scholars now agree in saying that when he did engage in this type of schematic representations of the ocean, Lowry seamlessly blended and blurred the horizon line, to the point where it becomes difficult to distinguish where the water ends and the sky begins. As the Head of Modern and British Art at Christie’s London Alice Murray claimed in relation to these pictures, these depictions are so empty they often border on abstract art.

His more detailed representations, instead, focus on depicting blissful moments of leisure by the sea or by lakes, the composition densely populated by crowds of matchstick men enjoying their free time, as in his Crime Lake. If his highly schematic but colourful  representations of the ocean verged on abstract art, these paintings are close in subject matter to Impressionism, resonating with works like The Beach at Trouville by Monet, who often indulged in peaceful and quaint representations of walks by the beach, while also sharing a darker colour palette that instantly distinguishes them as Lowryesque artworks.

Thus, Lowry’s production here takes a more personal and perhaps nostalgic note, the paintings being the means through which the artist reminisced about his peaceful family holidays. These artworks have however become rare collector’s pieces due to their limitedness in number. Opposing the grim and eerie ambience of his industrial scenes, these paintings evoke the peacefulness and tranquillity resulting from escaping the urban environment, a serene moment of escapism and light-heartedness also reflective of the PostWar optimism which undoubtedly impacted Lowry’s life and which the artist was committed to visually crystallise in time.

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