L.S Lowry painting sold by artist for £10 fetches more than £800k

The Herald Scotland

02-05-2025

Lyon & Turnbull, an Edinburgh-based auctioneers, sold the painting which had been in the hands of the same family for the last century and is believed to have been one of the earliest sales made by Lowry.
It was originally acquired directly from Lowry by the Manchester Guardian's literary editor A.S Wallace, who used three of his works to illustrate a special supplement to mark Manchester Civic Week in October 1925.
Going to the Mill is marked as being £30, but Lowry sold it for £10 and he was still so worried he had overcharged that he gave his friend an additional painting called The Manufacturing Town, which was sold several years ago.
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Simon Hucker, Lyon & Turnbull's Modern & Contemporary Art Specialist and Head of Sale said: 'We're absolutely delighted by the price achieved for this exceptional, early painting by Lowry, bought from him when he was a virtual unknown. There are few artists who become a household name in Britain and Lowry definitely falls into this category.
Mr Hucker added: "This is a painting shows that Lowry at his conceptual best – no naïve painter of 'matchstick men', as the old pop song went. Instead he is an artist of true dexterity who is making deliberate formal choices, abstracting the figure in order to express an idea about loneliness and isolation within the teeming city.
"Going to the Mill is the epitome of a 1920s Lowry, the period when he becomes a unique voice in British art. It is especially rare is for a painting such as this to have been in one collection for one year shy of a century and we are delighted to have played a small part in its history."