LS Lowry portray purchased for £10 in 1926 sells at public sale for £800,000

A unprecedented portray by means of LS Lowry purchased for £10 has offered at public sale for greater than £800,000.

The portray, Going to the Mill, used to be purchased by means of the literary editor of the Manchester Guardian, Arthur Wallace, for £10 in 1926 and has been in the similar circle of relatives ever since.

On Friday the paintings offered at public sale on the Mall Galleries in central London for £805,200, together with purchaser’s top rate.

Lowry, who used to be lauded for his portrayal of on a regular basis business scenes in northwest England, painted the piece in 1925.

Going to the Mill is marked at the again as being £30, however Lowry let Wallace have it for £10. Adjusted for inflation, that’s the identical of £521 in 2025, consistent with the Bank of England’s calculator.

The portray is assumed to be some of the earliest gross sales made by means of the Stretford-born painter. Lowry additionally gave Wallace an extra paintings, The Manufacturing Town, which the circle of relatives offered a number of years in the past.

Wallace had edited a complement for the Guardian to accompany a civic week organised by means of Manchester town council in October 1926, and featured 3 art work by means of the then suffering artist.

As Wallace’s grandson Keith explains, Lowry used to be featured in an accompanying exhibition at a Manchester division retailer, and Wallace – who had fallen for his sooty panoramas of factory-bound crowds – presented to shop for one.

“Lowry said with great daring: ‘Could we say £10?’ and Grandpa wrote a cheque. Then Lowry wrote back to him saying: ‘I think I’ve charged you too much. Can I give you another one as well?’ So Grandpa got two Lowrys for his £10.”

Going to the Mill, which has been within the Wallace circle of relatives for the remaining century, used to be lately on long-term mortgage to Pallant House Gallery in Chichester.

Simon Hucker, a contemporary and recent artwork specialist on the Lyon & Turnbull public sale space stated: “We’re absolutely delighted by the price achieved for this exceptional, early painting by Lowry, bought from him when he was a virtual unknown. There are few artists who become a household name in Britain and Lowry definitely falls into this category.

“This is a painting shows that Lowry at his conceptual best, no naive painter of ‘matchstick men’, as the old pop song went. Instead he is an artist of true dexterity who is making deliberate formal choices, abstracting the figure in order to express an idea about loneliness and isolation within the teeming city.

“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.”

In 2024 a Lowry portray titled Sunday Afternoon offered for nearly £6.3m at public sale.