![Laurence Stephen Lowry - Saturday Afternoon [1941]](http://c2.staticflickr.com/9/8488/29242964553_f1b2ba4811_b.jpg)
Saturday Afternoon seems to depict a large playground in the shadow of a mill or bonded warehouse, immediately below which crouch four short rows of back-to-back dwellings. The empty space is probably a building site, where the rest of the street is waiting to be built, but at the moment it is an improvised football pitch, where the local lads kick a ball around for their own amusement and the enjoyment of a few passers-by. To the extreme left, a more professional game takes place in front of more substantial crowds: it is the Saturday afternoon football match, one of Lowry's greatest and most popular subjects. But here the focus is on ordinary folk, though what for Lowry constitutes the ordinary is never as obvious or expected as it sounds.
[Christie’s Auction House - Oil on canvas, 45.7 x 61 cm]