Yesterday the evocative image fetched £133,250 at Christie's in South Kensington, London – well over four times more than its pre-sale upper estimate.

Grimshaw (1836-1893) was arguably the finest painter of moonlight and evening scenes of his age, feeding the enormous appetite of the Victorians for "mood"" pictures.

It was his popularity that led the House of Commons in 1872 to commission him to paint three views of the Roundhay Estate at the time of the Leeds Corporation Improvement Bill proposal to to turn the former private estate into a public park.

The result was a series of views which display all the qualities which Grimshaw, a Leeds-born policeman's son, had developed by the 1870s.

The painting sold yesterday, painted when Grimshaw was at the height of his powers and entitled Moonlight on the lake, Roundhay Park, Leeds, was bought by a private collector after last being sold at auction in 1979.

Christie's specialist Jane Oakley said: "The moon, breaking through the clouds, reflects the atmosphere of many Victorian novels and poems and it is no wonder that Grimshaw paintings were in such demand for book illustrations. Grimshaw himself was inspired by the writings of Wordsworth, Browning, Shelley and, in particular, Tennyson, and his Pre-Raphaelite experiences had heightened his poetic sensibility."

Roundhay, whose two lakes, Tropical World, canals, castle folly and golf course now attract nearly one million visitors a year, has been managed by Leeds City Council since 1878.

Grimshaw's father, David, was a policeman in Leeds until the early 1840s when the family moved to Norwich, Norfolk. But when his father became a collector for the Great Northern Railway Company in 1848, the family moved back to Leeds.