Name: Street Scene
Brand: L S Lowry
Rating: 4.9 (225 reviews)

Track auction value trend

The value of L S Lowry’s signed lithograph print, Street Scene, is estimated to be worth between £1,550 and £2,350. Over the past 12 months, 6 works have been sold, with an average selling price of £2,366. In the last five years, the hammer price has ranged from £1,000 in July 2019 to £5,500 in February 2023. The average annual growth rate of this artwork is -9%. This work has an auction history of 42 total sales since its entry to the market in March 2005. The edition size of this artwork is limited to 850.

Auction Date

Auction House

Artwork

Hammer Price

Return to Seller

Buyer Paid

March 2024

Gorringes - United Kingdom

Street Scene - Signed Print

December 2023

Woolley & Wallis - United Kingdom

Street Scene - Signed Print

November 2023

Bellmans, Sussex - United Kingdom

Street Scene - Signed Print

September 2023

Tate Ward Auctions - United Kingdom

Street Scene - Signed Print

September 2023

Mellors & Kirk - United Kingdom

Street Scene - Signed Print

August 2023

Fonsie Mealy Auctioneers - Ireland

Street Scene - Signed Print

July 2023

Ross's Fine Art Auctioneers - United Kingdom

Street Scene - Signed Print

Meaning & Analysis

L. S. Lowry’s print Street Scene from 1961 is a portrait composition showing a view of a street in an industrial inner city. This print is a vivid record of life in industrial northern England, marked by the smokestack at the top of the composition, with crowds of people walking up the hill towards the factory buildings in the backdrop.

Visible in this print is Lowry’s stiff consistency in his choice of paint and the way in which he used it. Lowry painted with Winsor & Newton Winton Oil Colour throughout his entire career and used the paint straight from the tube. Using a very limited colour palette, Lowry said of his choice of materials, “I am a simple man, I use simple materials: ivory black, vermilion, Prussian blue, yellow ochre, flake white and no medium.” In Street Scene it becomes clear that Lowry’s unique painterly style worked to produce modest, yet vividly realistic industrial scenes.

In this print there are no shadows cast from Lowry’s highly stylised figures and along with the artist’s use of white paint for the ground and sky, this gives the impression that there is no sunlight in this scene. The lack of sunlight gives the scene a melancholy tone, as though the smoke from the mills have seeped into the atmosphere, characterised by what art historian John Rothenstein called ‘a kind of gloomy lyricism.’