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LS Lowry painting bought for £10 sells for £800,000

PA Media

A rare painting by LS Lowry bought for £10 sold at auction for more than £800,000 yesterday.

The painting, Going to the Mill, was bought by the literary editor of the Manchester Guardian, Arthur Wallace, for £10 in 1926 and has been in the same family ever since.

It sold at auction at the Mall Galleries in central London for £805,200,including buyer's premium.

Lowry, famed for his portrayal of everyday industrial scenes in north-west England, painted it in 1925.

Going to the Mill is marked on the back as being priced at £30, but Lowry let Wallace have it for £10. That is the equivalent of £521 in 2025, according to the Bank of England's calculator.

The painting is believed to be one of the earliest sales made by the Stretford-born painter. Lowry also gave Wallace an additional work, The Manufacturing Town, which the family sold several years ago.

Wallace had edited a supplement for the Guardian to accompany a civic week organised by Manchester city council in October 1926, and featured three paintings by the then struggling artist.

As Wallace's grandson Keith explained, Lowry was featured in an accompanying exhibition at a Manchester department store, and Wallace - who had fallen for his sooty panoramas of factory-bound crowds - offered to buy 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."

In 2024 a Lowry painting titled Sunday Afternoon sold for almost £6.3m at auction.