Lowry drawings found during house clearance sold for £50,000 at auction

One of the pencil drawings, a sketch made under the viaduct at Sandsend, Whitby, in 1960, was sold to a private investor looking for an alternative to stocks and shares for £26,450 including VAT. He told Gary Don’s auction house he would do nothing with it for 20 years.

Another private investor paid £24,725 for a drawing of a polling booth in Manchester or Salford in the 1920s. He has said he will probably lend it to the Lowry Gallery in Salford until he needs to sell it, in 20 years or so, to pay for his daughter’s wedding.

Mr Don said both had fetched more than predicted by London-based experts. He had had six lines dedicated to telephone bids so all the potential southern buyers were in the auction anyway.

He said yesterday: “There could be more to be discovered. Lowry probably made 2,000 pictures. He liked to go to the coast and draw ferry boats, which are not as obviously his as the stick-man works.

“The two we have just auctioned were originally sold through a gallery in Newcastle and had never been seen in public since.

“Our phones have been going mad since news of the discovery. And as a result, just today, in Huddersfield once again, I have identified a portrait dating from 1629 by the Dutch painter De Vries, which we can expect to fetch between £7,500 and £10,000 when it comes up for sale shortly.

“That was bought for £10 in the 1950s from Lexton Park in Colchester, home of Sir Percy Saunders.”

Abraham de Vries was a Dutch painter who lived 1590-1662. To contact Gary Don’s gallery, see www.garydon.co.uk.

A 1949 painting by LS Lowry, The Football Match, sold for £5.6m at Christie’s in London yesterday, setting a new world record for the artist, who died in 1976 at the age of 88.