L.S. Lowry’s painting of the village that inspired Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights will go under the hammer on 1st July at Bonhams New Bond Street Sale of 20th Century British Art estimated at up to £180,000.

The painting is one of four Lowry’s included in the sale, the other three representing more conventional subjects for the painter.

Lowry is famed for paintings of the industrial North West, where the crowded scenes belie the sense of loneliness and detachment. It is fascinating, therefore, to observe his take on a landscape equally bleak for its want of life and vast spaces. The painting captures well the oppressive unbroken off-white of the sky, its unexpected brightness serving to contrast with the dark landscape below, the smudge of pollution hinted at in the corners.

“In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society”. (Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights.)

The painting unselfconsciously references Emily Bronte’s work. As the title suggests, the landscape that provided the inspiration for the present work was a place called the Witherns, near Haworth, West Yorkshire. This location has become intimately tied with the Brontë sisters who were born and brought up in the village of Haworth in the mid-nineteenth century. It is thought that the derelict farmhouse at Top Witherns was the inspiration for Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.

http://www.bonhams.com/20cpictures

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2. L.S. Lowry Painting for Bonhams London Auction
3. Sotheby’s auctions unpublished autograph manuscript by Charlotte Brontë for £690,850 / $ 1,069,229