Coming Out of School
- Artist: L.S. Lowry
- Date: 1927
- Medium: Oil paint on plywood
- Dimensions: support: 347 x 539 mm
- Museum: Tate Britain
- Collection record: Tate Britain website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the “Coming Out of School” by L.S. Lowry. Painted in 1927, it’s an oil on plywood that isn’t a snapshot of a particular building but a memory of a Lancashire school. Lowry’s eye for detail—those soot‑blackened windows, the flickering chimneys—converges with a touch of imagination to give the work an almost dream‑like quality.
You’ll notice his hallmark patterning: repetitive brickwork and a grid‑like arrangement of figures that makes the whole scene feel rhythmically authentic. The children, rendered in his signature simplified, almost childlike strokes, crowd the front steps, while the industrial backdrop hints at the smoky, working‑class atmosphere of northern England.
Lowry first showed this piece in the 1927 Daily Express Young Artists Exhibition at R.B.A. Galleries, and it was later acquired by the Duveen Paintings Fund in 1949. Today it sits in Tate Britain’s historic and modern British art collection, a testament to Lowry’s talent for turning everyday surroundings into images that resonate across time.
See it in person
Coming Out of School is in the collection of Tate Britain on Millbank, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
