Lowry work fetches record £3.8m

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A 1946 work by LS Lowry has been sold for £3,772,000, the highest price paid for one of his paintings at auction.

Good Friday, Daisy Nook, which depicts the eponymous Lancashire town in party mood a year after World War II, was bought by Richard Green of London.

The artwork was last seen at auction in 1970 when it sold for £16,800, a record price for the artist at the time.

Lowry's Factories, Lancashire sold for £1,128,800 at the sale of 20th Century British Art in Christie's in London.

The price raised by this 1947 work was the fourth highest paid for the artist at auction.

Spare time

Three other Lowry paintings went under the hammer on Friday: Beach and Promenade, sold for £546,400; The Mansion, Pendlebury, let go for £344,800; and 1954 work Whitehaven, which fetched £180,000.

A sixth work, entitled Footbridge, South Shields, failed to meet its reserve price.

The previous record for a Lowry was the £1.9m the Professional Footballers Association paid for Going To The Match in 1999.

Born in 1887, Lowry was made the official artist at the coronation of the Queen in 1953 despite only painting in his spare time.

He died aged 88 in 1976, just months before a retrospective exhibition at the Royal Academy broke all attendance records for a 20th Century artist.