Two Lowry paintings fetch over £1.8m at auction

The 1955 painting of Maryport fetched £882,000

Two "rare" paintings by LS Lowry have sold for a combined sum of more than £1.8m.

A painting of Senhouse Street in Maryport, Cumbria, went under the hammer at Christie's auction house and sold for £882,000 on Wednesday.

A second famous work by the artist - 'Going to the Station' and set in Manchester - had a lower guide price but sold for £945,000.

Laurence Stephen Lowry, who died in 1976, is known for his depictions of working-class life in industrial parts of northern England.

In the 1955 oil on canvas, the Queen's Head Inn is recognisable on the bottom right corner of Senhouse Street.

Expected to fetch between £700,000 and £1m, it sold after a bidding process that took around 90 seconds at the live event in St James's, London.

"Paintings of known views are much rarer in Lowry’s output, and this view is still recognisable today," a spokesman for the auction house said.

'Going to the Station' is set in Manchester and was sold by Lowry a year before he died

The Senhouse Street painting was first bought at an exhibition in 1956 and had three previous owners, being gifted in 1959 before going under the hammer at Christie's previously in June 2004.

Going to the Station, the second Lowry painting sold on Wednesday, dates to 1962 and depicts a scene in the artist's native Manchester.

Before being sold, it had been owned by the same family since 1975.