Lowry to fund spending spree on Scottish art

Scotland's historic artists' society is to go on a spending spree to improve its collection of works by Scottish painters.

The Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) said the 550,000 sale of The Hawker's Cart by LS Lowry would allow it to revamp its portfolio.

Top figures in the Edinburgh-based RSA, which has more than 100 members, including most of Scotland's favourite artists, toasted with champagne after the hammer fell on Lowry's work at auctioneer Lyon & Turnbull in the capital.

But the RSA's plan to sell another major oil painting, by the famous American naturalist John James Audubon, has run into passionate opposition, despite early signs it might fetch millions in the US market.

Author John Chalmers has pleaded with the society to keep the work for the city, saying it would be an "immeasurable loss".

Lowry, an English artist popular for his stick figures and moving industrial scenes, commands record prices in the art markets. But The Hawker's Cart was not considered vital to RSA as it "rationalises" its collection in favour of the core work of members from the past two centuries.

The hammer price was well above its estimated value of 300,000 to 500,000 for a work that had been in storage for ten years. "We were delighted," said RSA secretary Arthur Watson.

• One-man crusade to stop sale of Audubon painting

Nick Curnow, director of Lyon & Turnbull, said "This is a continuation of our success at selling paintings by LS Lowry in Edinburgh.

"In 2006, his Glasgow Docks sold for 530,000. That painting belonged to the Fleming Art Collection, who were also rationalising their collection. In 2009, we sold a painting titled Barges on a Canal for 88,000."

In a two-year plan to balance its finances and "rationalise" its collection, the RSA is selling or donating about 20 works "acquired or donated or picked up that don't seem to make any sense with the collection of Scottish art", Mr Watson said.

It will set up an endowment to manage its collection and buy the works of members who, for some reason, didn't donate a work during their lifetimes.

"The proceeds of this and other pictures we are selling will go into a ring-fenced fund to support work of the collections department and make purchases to fill gaps in the collection," Mr Watson said.

"That will take a long time because a lot of the work doesn't come up every day, but we will be keeping an eye on things. With some of the more recent ones, we will be going out to approach the family."

A target list of nearly 60 missing artists includes Indian-born sculptor Fanindra Nath Bose, thought to be the first non-European RSA member, who drowned in her 30s in a Peeblesshire loch in 1926.Joanna Soden, the RSA's collections curator, said it would also focus on notable "associate" members, who didn't give works to the society because they were never elected full members.

"This is very much a long-term plan and we won't have to buy anything immediately.

"The associate members who are not represented in this collection include Arthur Melville and Robert Brough. They were both working in really exciting ways when they died," she said.

Melville, one of the Glasgow Boys, died in 1904, aged 56. He is popular for his work from Spain and North Africa. Aberdeen-based Brough died in 1905 in his early 30s in a train accident.