He only ever painted three such paintings. Experts say they were a reflection of the loneliness in his own life.
There were no figures, not even a distant boat - just gently rolling waves and a grey horizon. Now one those works, a seascape from 1964, is up for sale. The oil on canvas is by L S Lowry and has an estimated price of £1.2m to £1.8m.
The Fylde coast at Lytham St Annes and walking next to the North Sea near Sunderland were haunts of the artist. The work, called "The Sea" is being auctioned at Christie's on March 22nd.
Christie's say of the painting: "There is an existential loneliness to most of L.S. Lowry’s paintings; a profound sense of emptiness - often carried by the ever-present white void of their backgrounds - that the artist often appears to have attempted to fill in with pictorial imagery.
"Typically, these images took the form of lonely, isolated, human, so-called ‘matchstick’ figures and cold, impersonal, industrial buildings. Yet, of all of Lowry’s works, it is in his very rare but extremely poignant and expressive paintings of the sea that this unique artist came closest to depicting a direct confrontation between this ever-present sense of the void in his work and his own overwhelming sense of loneliness and isolation."
Lowry once said: "Generally, I put nothing on the sea when I paint it. Perhaps a tiny boat if I must."
It is speculated that Lowry's loneliness deepened after the death of his mother, Elizabeth with whom he lived at 117 Station Road, Pendlebury, for 40 years. It was in the attic of that house that he painted many of his masterpieces. The sea was an important subject in his painting from the very beginning - visits to the seaside at Lytham and Rhyl with his mother during the final years of the 19th century were the source of his happiest childhood memories.
Formerly on long-term loan to the Abbot Hall art gallery, The Sea, measuring over a metre wide, is up for auction for the fist time.
It is, along with one other similarly-scaled example from 1963 now belonging to The Lowry museum in Salford and one other work, one of only three large-scale paintings of the sea that Lowry made. All of the artist’s other seascapes, the majority of which also belong to museum collections such as The Lowry, the Sunderland Museum, the Kelvingrove and the Arts Council Collection were all on a smaller scale.
At the same auction, two other Lowry oils will be under the hammer - The Village Street, with a price of £1m to £1.5m; and The Footbridge, valued at £200,000 to £300,000.
All three works will be on offer at Christie's Modern British and Irish Art Evening Sale on 22 March 2022.
