Lowry painting sets auction record

A painting by L S Lowry set an auction record for the artist's work yesterday by fetching pounds 282,000 - several times its estimate. The oil painting, entitled A Cricket Match, was bought by a British couple who fought off four telephone bidders at Sotheby's in central London. The unnamed buyers told Sotheby's they had always wanted to own a Lowry and this was the best they had ever seen at auction. It shows a game of cricket in the back streets of 1930s Manchester.

Christies, meanwhile, announced it would auction a previously unrecorded part of a soprano aria by Mozart. It is expected to make about pounds 30,000. The manuscript is contemporary with Mozart's opera Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail and it is possible that he intended to include it in the opera, first performed in 1782.