£1,000 - £1,500
"The Fever Van" Limited Edition by L.S. Lowry.
7528 - Limited edition by L.S. Lowry titled "The Fever Van" This is actually number One from the edition of only 75 published Worldwide. Supplied complete with a certificate of authenticity, signed by the "Master Printer" and a replacement valuation of £1650, both free of charge. Superbly professionally framed and mounted. Mint condition. It shows an ambulance arriving to collect a patient from a small terraced house. The sufferer probably has diptheria or scarlet fever, both highly contagious diseases and widespread in industrial Britain in the 1930s. A lack of vaccinations meant that such diseases were frequently fatal. Lowry's treatment of the theme avoids excessive sentimentality; he goes for a distant view of the ambulance and the crowd gathered around it rather than a close-up of the drama. He was clearly interested in the effect of accidents on the urban scene and once said: "Accidents interest me - I have a very queer mind you know. What fascinates me is the people they attract. The patterns those people form, and the atmosphere of tension when something has happened… Where there's a quarrel there's always a crowd… It's a great draw. A quarrel or a body." Lowry is often characterised as a self-taught artist, but despite the apparent naivety of his work, drawing was always the foundation of his paintings. The cropped edges of "The Fever Van" give a feeling of incompleteness to the scene, suggesting the ephemeral and fragmentary character of life in industrial towns. In "The Fever Van" the red of the houses in the foreground contrasts with the greyish blue of the church in the distance. The smoke from the chimney on the left-hand side casts a shadow onto the walls opposite, serving as a visual metaphor for the all-pervasive smog of industrial Salford. Lowry's painting of figures is almost abstract because of the elimination of details. He once said: " Natural figures would have broken the spell of it, so I made them half unreal… Had I drawn them as they are, it would not have looked like a vision… I have been called a painter of Manchester work people. But my figures are not exactly that, they are ghostly figures… which seems to me so beautiful, they are symbols of my mind. They are myself.". H: 96cm W: 110cm D: 4cm
