Three works by L.S Lowry are up for auction tonight with one, the railway platform, expected to sell for at least £1.3m.
The auction, at Christies in London, a Painting of Pendlebury Station, which was on Bolton Road, opposite St Augustine’s Church, and about half a mile from the artist’s home in Station Road, Pendlebury.
It was painted in 1953, the artist observes a crowd of people: friends meeting and greeting each other, a dog nuzzling its owner’s leg, people conversing in small animated groups, while others read a newspaper, or turn to chat. For such a large crowd to be captured, and for a vignette of the mill and smoking chimneys to be glimpsed beyond the station walls, it was necessary for the artist to employ an unusually long format.
Pictures of railway stations are very rare in Lowry’s output, although a small number of paintings of Paddington station exist.
The two paintings on sale are Park and Steps, from 1954, which has been described as an optimistic painting where loomingfactories and terraced houses have been replaced by openness, while the pale, almost ethereal outlines of the factories and billowing chimneys in the background are barely industrial in form.
While Tuesday Morning, Pendelbury features St. Mary’s Church, which would be demolished in 1964. It was painted in 1947 two years after the end of the war and while Lowry was still working as Chief Cashier of the Pall Mall Property Company in Manchester.
