A painting titled Sunday Afternoon from British artist LS Lowry has sold for almost £6.3 million at auction.

The big-ticket item, which had not been publicly exhibited for 57 years, was estimated to fetch between £4 million and £6 million at Christie’s Modern British And Irish Art sale on Wednesday.

The painting was last sold in 1967, realising a record price for the artist at the time, and was offered from the collection of Sir Keith and Lady Showering.

The 1957 piece went under the hammer for £6,290,000, including buyer’s premium.

It is the second highest price achieved for Lowry at auction, after his 1953 painting Going To The Match sold at Christie’s in October 2022 for £7,846,500.

Meanwhile, the auction in London also saw an oval-shaped sculpture by Dame Barbara Hepworth exceed its price estimate of between £2.2 million and £3.2 million.

Sculpture With Colour (Oval Form) Pale Blue And Red, carved in 1943, sold for £3,549,000.

Other works by the Wakefield-born artist also went under the hammer, including the brass 1957 sculpture Maquette For Winged Figure which sold for £277,200.

Also up for sale was Londoner Lynn Chadwick’s metallic sculpture, Sitting Couple On Bench, which was conceived in 1990 and cast in 2001.

It sold for £1,613,000, having been estimated to go for between £1.2 million and £1.8 million.