After spending much of his childhood in the leafy suburb of Victoria Park, Manchester, his family moved to the industrial town of Pendlebury in Salford.

The huge black framework of rows of yellow-lit windows standing up against the sad, damp charged afternoon sky.

I watched this scene — which I'd looked at many times without seeing — with rapture..."[1] Lowry's art was shaped by his observations of the northern urban environment.

The oil on canvas measures 45 by 60 cm (18 by 24 in) and depicts a wide, bleak urban panorama of smoking factory chimneys, roads, bridges, gasometers, terraced houses and churches.

At the centre of the canvas, a street emerges from the distance, punctuated with tiny human figures, and in the foreground, a statue stands on top of a hillock.

[4][5] Lowry's 1955 painting of the same title similarly presents a panoramic cityscape dotted with factories, tall smoking chimneys, roads, bridges and industrial wasteland.

Certain elements in the picture may be identified as real locations, such as the Stockport Viaduct, a frequent motif in Lowry's work, which stretches across the distance on the left of the canvas, with a small train crossing over.