Dimensions: support: 347 x 539 mm
Copyright: © The estate of L.S. Lowry | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Curator: The work before us is "Coming Out of School" by L.S. Lowry. Painted with oil on canvas, it captures a scene of children leaving school. Editor: It feels melancholic. Those figures are so doll-like, almost stick figures, yet they evoke a certain kind of working-class stoicism. Curator: Lowry's matchstick figures become a powerful symbol of the industrial working class, don't they? Each figure, though indistinct, contributes to a collective narrative. Editor: It's like he's documenting a cultural ritual—the daily exodus from learning into the wider world. Though I can’t help but wonder about the bleakness... what lessons are these kids learning? Curator: Perhaps a lesson in resilience, or community? The factories loom, but so does the vibrancy of youth spilling into the streets. It presents a familiar social landscape. Editor: Well, whatever the lesson, it is a landscape that stays with you. I find myself wanting to know their stories, these anonymous souls.
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http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/lowry-coming-out-of-school-n05912
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Like many of Lowry's pictures this is not a depiction of a particular place, but is based on recollections of a school seen in Lancashire. Lowry's combination of observation and imaginative power often produced images which capture a deeply felt experience of place, with which others could identify. For example, in 1939 John Rothenstein, then Director of the Tate Gallery, visited Lowry's first solo exhibition in London and later wrote: 'I stood in the gallery marvelling at the accuracy of the mirror that this to me unknown painter had held up to the bleakness, the obsolete shabbiness, the grimy fogboundness, the grimness of northern industrial England.' This work was then purchased by the Trustees. Gallery label, April 1994
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