L.S.Lowry’s iconic painting ‘Beach Scene, Lancashire’, which has been part of a Canadian collection for the last 70 years, is to go to auction at Sotheby’s in London tomorrow (Tuesday 21st November) with an estimate of £1m – £1.5m.  The 1947 work is a famous snapshot of an English summer’s day, and is widely thought by art experts to depict Lytham St. Anne’s. It is considered one of LS Lowry’s finest seascape paintings.

Lytham St Anne’s was a destination Lowry knew well, with many family holidays spent there in his youth.

The beach scene is one of five Lowry works being sold at the Sotheby’s auction in London. Three of them are oil paintings, including the 1957 work ‘Up North’ (depicted below), a title seen as Lowry having fun with his growing southern audience. It has the matchstick figures, terrace houses and smoking chimneys he is most remembered for.

Talking about ‘Beach Scene, Lancashire’ André Zlattinger, Sotheby’s Hea d of Modern British Art said, ‘I think it is a remarkable painting. It is very clever pictorially, those two figures in the foreground just set the picture off … it is one of the strongest Lowry’s I’ve ever had and it will be interesting to see how it’s received by the market.’

The painting was bought in 1955 by the Canadian media baron and politician Lord Beaverbrook, one of the most influential figures in British society during the first half of the last century.

In 1959, Beaverbrook gifted it to the art gallery he funded and stocked in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

The Beaverbrook art gallery said it was selling its Lowry to fund future acquisitions.