The Lancaster-born woman met Lowry in Morecambe and later recounted her delight in the simple pleasures of eating ice cream and her visible enjoyment of the seaside, and the couple bonded over their shared love of the sea.
She had a special affinity with the sea sparked by childhood holidays in St Bees on the Cumbrian coast.
After studying to be a classical pianist in Perugia and Paris, she returned to the Northwest to get married and together with her husband started a successful business.
‘The North Sea’, an important seascape by Laurence Stephen Lowry, will sell in Tennants Auctioneers’ Modern and Contemporary Art sale on October 15 with an estimate of £400,000-600,000 (plus commission) Buyer).
The painting was last seen in public view at an exhibition in 1967, the year after it was painted, and has been in private hands ever since.
Lowry was fascinated by the sea. Both beautiful and dangerously powerful, it was a constant source of inspiration for the solitary artist and he painted it throughout his life; however, the majority of his seascapes depict the northwest coast, the seaside resorts of Lytham and Rhyl where he had spent many holidays with his somewhat overbearing mother. He painted seafronts animated by vacationers and boats sailing on sunny seas.
However, from the early 1940s he began to paint pure seascapes, with nothing but sea and sky.
These rare, seemingly simple yet highly sophisticated works are a far cry from the bustling industrial street scenes for which he is best known.
“The North Sea”, painted in 1966, is one of the finest examples of his rare large-scale seascapes.
After his mother’s death in 1939 and he was free to choose his own holiday destinations, Lowry frequently stayed for long periods at the Seaburn Hotel in Sunderland, to which he became deeply attached and where the staff took great care of him.
Here he always stayed in the same room, which looked directly out onto the empty expanse of the North Sea, water and sky merging on the horizon.
“The North Sea” encapsulates Lowry’s extraordinary skill in manipulating his distinctive five-color palette to create a painting that at first glance appears monochromatic, but on closer inspection demonstrates skillful use. of color.
While primarily using his beloved snowflake white, Lowry modulated it with ivory black and hints of yellow ochre, Prussian blue and vermilion. Lowry worked on his paintings over several months, gradually adding layer upon layer to create texture and tone of great complexity and depth that draw the viewer in.
It is often suggested that we should view these seascapes solely as images of solitude, however, these works are as enigmatic and multifaceted as the artist himself. Whatever his intentions, Lowry has created a remarkable work of art that captures the mysterious pull the sea has long held for humanity.
Two pencil sketches by Lowry from the same collection will also be offered in the sale, ‘A Pond’ with an estimate of £15,000-25,000 and ‘Man Taken Ill’ with an estimate of £12,000-18,000.
