A LOWRY painting of a Ribble Valley street scene reached double the expected price when it was sold for more than £120,000 at an auction at Christie's yesterday.

Experts expected the 16in x 12in oil painting of Church Brow, Clitheroe, to fetch between £50,000 and £80,000 but it was sold to a British trader for £122,500.

The street scene fetched the second highest price in the multi-million pound sale of 20th century British art. Another LS Lowry oil "Procession in Manchester" went for the sale's highest price at £183,000.

Christie's expert Rachel Hidderley said: "Lowrys are very popular at the moment. It's a trend that's been building over the last three or four years since we held a sale of a large Lowry collection in 1995.

"It introduced a huge number of new buyers to Lowry and raised his profile. There will be a new Lowry centre next year in Salford which has had good press as well."

The Clitheroe street scene was painted in 1963 and is based on drawings and colour notes he made during a visit to the town more than 30 years before. The original sketches are now in Salford Art Gallery.

Lowry studied painting in Manchester and Salford but, following the death of his father Robert in 1932, he was forced to work as a rent collector to support his bedridden mother Elizabeth, who was not interested in his art.

Until her death in 1939, he spent every evening nursing her but, despite his physical and emotional exhaustion, painted and drew into the early hours of the morning.

He is famous for his "matchstick" figures who scurry across his paintings and drew much of his inspiration from the people of the industrial areas in which he worked.

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