LS Lowry's Street Scene, Factory Gates sells for £50k

Street Scene, Factory Gates was tipped to fetch between £50,000 and £70,000

An oil painting of a street scene by LS Lowry has sold for £50,000 at auction.

Street Scene, Factory Gates was painted by the artist in 1962 and shows a busy street with looming mills in the background.

It was tipped to fetch between £50,000 and £70,000 before it went under the hammer in Leyburn, North Yorkshire.

A second Lowry painting, The End House, failed to sell. It was estimated to fetch between £120,000 and £180,000.

The 1966 work depicts a sparse street scene with a towering black house in the background.

The End House failed to reach the minimum reserve price went it went under the hammer

Auctioneers Tennants said both paintings were "unseen on the open market for almost two decades".

Street Scene, Factory Gates was bought by a private UK buyer, it added.

Born in 1887, Laurence Stephen Lowry gained recognition for his seemingly simple depictions of working-class life in the industrial parts of northern England.