Colin Gleadell puts the record L.S. Lowry sale at Christie’s in London last week into some perspective:

Lowry contributed more than 45 per cent of the sale’s proceeds. One of the buyers was Richard Green, who added to his enviable stock of Lowrys with Coronation Street, a depiction of the street in Salford that inspired Britain’s longest-running soap opera, for which he paid £445,200.

But the buyer of the sale’s top lot, Lowry’s The Football Match, is still a mystery. This industrial landscape, in which the crowds are gathered to watch a game of football, had last sold at auction in 1992 for £132,000. Lowry paintings have been among the most consistent performers at auction and in the past decade they have increased in value by an average of 13 per cent per annum, according to the art market analysts Art Market Research.

The Week Britain Bounced Back (Telegraph)