IN the holdings of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, is to be found L.S. Lowry's After the Wedding (1939), revealing as much about ideology as happiness.
The characters of the title occasion are both prominent and obscure. They stand in the distance, on the chapel steps, dwarfed by buildings left and right, yet are the centre of the crowd's attention. For the couple, this is a uniquely significant day, yet Lowry shows the business of life continuing amid the more placid business of etiquette. In the background, factory towers and church spires stand side by side, the men of steel and the men of God seemingly competing for ideological supremacy. Amid all the occasion, the axis of industry is ever turning, chimneys emitting a blackness as foreboding as it is evocative.
Key to the drama the bride and groom undoubtedly are, we find, as so often with Lowry, that everybody is a character. The adults and the children, the old and young, are members of his artistic democracy, nobody given pride of place amid the beguilingly individual appearances and idiosyncrasies.
The characters of the title occasion are both prominent and obscure. They stand in the distance, on the chapel steps, dwarfed by buildings left and right, yet are the centre of the crowd's attention. For the couple, this is a uniquely significant day, yet Lowry shows the business of life continuing amid the more placid business of etiquette. In the background, factory towers and church spires stand side by side, the men of steel and the men of God seemingly competing for ideological supremacy. Amid all the occasion, the axis of industry is ever turning, chimneys emitting a blackness as foreboding as it is evocative.
Key to the drama the bride and groom undoubtedly are, we find, as so often with Lowry, that everybody is a character. The adults and the children, the old and young, are members of his artistic democracy, nobody given pride of place amid the beguilingly individual appearances and idiosyncrasies.
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