Lowry painting sold by painter for £10 makes £800k at auction

A painting L. S. Lowry sold for £10 has made more than £800,000 at auction.

Going To The Mill was bought in 1926 by the Manchester Guardian’s literary editor, Arthur Wallace, for the equivalent of £520 in today’s money.

The Stretford-born artist thought he had charged Mr Wallace “too much” and gave him another painting, called The Manufacturing Town, for free.

But earlier, Going To The Mill was sold by Mr Wallace’s family at a London auction for £805,000.

Simon Hucker, the modern and contemporary art specialist for auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull, said the painting was from a time when Lowry was “a virtual unknown”.

“There are few artists who become a household name in Britain and Lowry definitely falls into this category,” he added.

Lowry painted Going to the Mill in 1925, 14 years before he achieved fame with a one-man exhibition.

His scenes of everyday life against industrial backdrops of Manchester were populated by distinctive simple figures that were the subject of the 1978 Brian and Michael single Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats And Dogs.

Going To The Mill features a mill and chimney stack and millworkers in the foreground.

It was recently on long-term loan to Pallant House Gallery, Chichester.

Mr Hucker added: “Going to the Mill is the epitome of a 1920s Lowry, the period when he becomes a unique voice in British art.

“It is especially rare is for a painting such as this to have been in one collection for one year shy of a century and we are delighted to have played a small part in its history.”