In September 1945 Lowry made his very first visit to the Norfolk family home of his friend and fellow artist David Carr, where the two bonded in sharing techniques and exchanging opinions of their works. After the visit Lowry sent Carr a selection of pastels and drawings that he had made nearly thirty years earlier, inviting his friend to comment. These works, Lowry wrote, 'show in the rawest state my first attempts at depicting the industrial scene' (S. Rohde, A Private View of L.S. Lowry, London, 1987, p. 212).

This view of a canal with barges and a footbridge, which comes from the collection of the Carr family, indeed relates embryonically to a theme that Lowry developed both in drawings (Footbridge at Clifton Junction, 1920, Manchester City Art Gallery) and in paintings (Barges on a Canal, 1941, Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museum). It is associated with his move in 1909 to Pendlebury, a village near Salford, which offered numerous industrial landscapes including its canal and bridge, as depicted in Pendlebury Bridge, 1919, sold at Christie's, London, on 11 July 2013 for £25,000.