An oil painting said to have been painted at Sunderland by the esteemed artist L.S Lowry has fetched more than £1million at auction.
The painting, called The North Sea, which was signed and dated in 1966, is said to be one of the finest examples of Lowry’s large scale sea paintings and was sold for over £1m at Tennants Auctioneers’ Modern and Contemporary Art Sale on Saturday, October 15. The work is thought to have been painted while Lowry stayed at the Seaburn Hotel on the Sunderland coast, a place he frequently visited on holiday.
The painting was last exhibited at London's Lefevre Gallery in 1967, but had remained in private hands in the North West ever since. It was sold at auction for £840,000 earlier this month, but with added buyer's fees, the price of the work went over the £1m mark.
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A description of The North Sea painting on the Tennants website says the work "demonstrates Lowry’s sophistication, skill and pure joy derived from working with his favourite Flake White pigment as the main colour which he expertly mixes with the other four colours in his preferred five colour only palette (Ivory Black, Vermillion, Prussian Blue, Yellow Ochre and Flake White)." It adds: "Each evening when painting he would lay up layer upon layer of paint leaving the picture to dry then adding another layer over and over again over many months until he had achieved the desired texture and depth to create a picture that draws the viewer irresistibly into this masterly composition."
Lowry's seascapes are in contrast to the artist's normally busy, densely populated coastal scenes and the street and mill scenes he is famous for. Lowry had always painted seascapes from as early as 1914, and after his mother died in 1939 he began to regularly go to Wearside on holiday, staying frequently at the Seaburn Hotel, and always stayed in the same room.
Tennants state: "These unpopulated seascapes first appear in the 1940s, which coincided with Lowry’s newly found freedom and improved personal finances thus allowing him extended holiday stays on his own at Seaburn. Here from his hotel room, Lowry could look straight out at the North Sea which obligingly offered up its wide empty skies and far distant horizons to feed Lowry’s imagination and to inspire him."
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