'LOST' LOWRY RESURFACES TO BE SOLD AT AUCTION FOR £2.65M

It went missing to the world of Art some 70-years-ago only to resurface and sold at the world famous Christies auction-house to a private investor for a staggering £2.65m.

The long lost work by L.S Lowry entitled 'The Mill, Pendlbury' is a depiction of Mill workers enjoying a day off as children play Cricket on a croft, it was completed by Lowry in 1945 before falling into the hands of medical researcher - Leonard D Hamilton (Discoverer of the double helix shape of DNA) who took the painting abroad to the United States in 1949 where it remained until being discovered after his death in August last year.

As a result of its time spent in the US, the art world was unaware it even existed.

Unlike some of Lowry's work, the figures in this painting are not the more usual stick figures as seen in his other work, the characters are more rounded and clearly defined.

The painting had been expected to fetch a figure of between £700,000 and £1m but it sold for far more.

Acme Mill which is depicted in the painting, was the first electrically powered cotton spinning mill in England.

However, due to the changes of the times, production ceased in 1959 and the building was later demolished in 1984.