£2m a fair price for Lowry work?

A LOWRY painting of Oldham’s Daisy Nook fair could fetch £2 million when it goes up for auction next month.

The 1953 work is to be sold by Christie’s as part of what is claimed to be the most important group of Lowry works to come to auction.

It also includes his painting of London’s bustling Piccadilly Circus, which it is thought might sell for up to £6 million, which would be a world record for the artist’s work.

The current high of £5.6 million is for The Football Match, set earlier this year. The list of 14 Lowry works have been part of late hotel tycoon Lord Forte’s collection for almost three decades.

A previous Lowry painting of Daisy Nook from 1946 — called “Good Friday, Daisy Nook” — fetched £3.7 million at auction in 2007. Lowry created several paintings of the traditional Easter fair run by Silcock’s amusements, which is still held today.

LS Lowry is most famous for the matchstick figures he painted against a backdrop of northern mill towns. But he also painted two images of Piccadilly Circus, just months apart. The earlier one — measuring 20 inches by 24 inches — set a record price for the artist in 1998, fetching £562,500. The sale also includes Saturday Afternoon, painted in 1941, with figures playing football and cycling at the weekend in front of an imposing factory building.

Lord Forte, who died in 2007, built up his worldwide leisure empire after opening a milk bar on London’s Regent Street in 1935, at the age of 26.