A painting by famous artist L.S Lowry has sold at an island auction for £350,000 after receiving only one bid.

Murray Keefe of Chrystals auctions had expected it to go for somewhere between £500,000 and £700,000.

The painting, titled ’The Street with Many Steps’, was owned by a Manx woman who Mr Keefe’s father John had sold it to for a record-breaking £21,500 - or £94,284 in 2020 terms.

The painting had stayed with the same family in Laxey until Murray Keefe found it again when he was clearing the deceased woman’s house.

Signed and dated 1961, the 19 x 15-inch oil canvas piece depicts Crowther Street in Stockport, England.

Lowry is famous for this depictions of industrial areas of North West England, and his unique style is known for depicting urban landscapes with people in them, often described as ’matchstick men’.

Chrystals said that the street scene ’relates closely to other works from the 1930s in which he focuses on the groups and individual figures and their energy’.

Mr Keefe said ’the going was slightly slow’ at the two viewing days for the painting, which he described as being ’an important painting by him [Lowry], [and]undoubtedly by him’.

However, he said the people who turned up to see the painting were ’knowledgeable’, adding that ’quite a few of them I didn’t know who they were, but they seemed to know about the painting.

’We had interest from all over: London, the North West, especially the Isle of Man,’ he added.

Mr Keefe started the bidding at £350,000, which was the price the work then sold for after only receiving the one bid.