Mystery of the skilful Scots skater

• The central figure on Duddingston Loch has prompted an investigation by auctioneers who value Charles Lees' work at between 100,000 and 200,000

But Sotheby's experts are working to identify the central figure, a graceful skater who features in the work and at least two other pictures by the Scottish artist Charles Lees

Skaters, a Scene on Duddingston Loch near Edinburgh was shown at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1854 to popular acclaim, a year after Lees painted it. The Art Journal described it as "a work of highest character in almost every desirable quality of art".

Lees made a career of painting Scottish sporting scenes, from curling to golf as well as several other skating pictures. Two of his best-known works are to feature in major exhibitions of Scottish art this year.

The painting is being sold by the daughter of a private Scottish collector who bought it in 1966, Sotheby's said. It is thought to feature members of the Edinburgh Skating Club, the oldest figure skating club in the world, made up of local gentlemen and landed gentry who had to take a skills test to be admitted.

Lees was a pupil of the artist Sir Henry Raeburn, who painted the iconic Victorian picture, The Revd Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch. While some experts have questioned if Raeburn was actually the artist, Walker was a prominent member of the club.

Skaters goes to auction in Sotheby's sale of Victorian and Edwardian art in London next month with an estimated value of 100,000-200,000. The auctioneer's Scottish pictures expert, Michael Grist, praised the characterisation of the people on the ice, and the textures and details of the work.

But while it includes a woman selling treats and other figures falling or careering wildly, attention is focused on a young man in a top hat turning smoothly on one skate in a debonair style.

"We tried to identify him because the central figure is clearly a proficient skater and a handsome man who appears in a number of the following pictures. He was clearly a local man, and a member of the Edinburgh skating society, and the way he was dressed suggests a relatively wealthy professional man," said Mr Grist.

A similar figure appears in Lees' evocative work Skaters: Duddingston Loch by Moonlight. The 1857 picture, in the Fleming Collection of Scottish art, comes to Edinburgh on loan when the Scottish National Portrait Gallery reopens later this year. It will feature in one of the revamped gallery's new exhibitions, Playing for Scotland, the Making of Modern Sport.

The portrait gallery's own collection includes The Golfers, Grand Match at Golf which Lees painted at an historic St Andrew's match in 1844. A landmark golfing picture, it will feature in a National Galleries touring exhibition this year. The Royal Caledonian Club owns another major Lees' work, of curlers, painted of the Grand Match at Linlithgow Loch. But while the golfing and curling pictures include named individuals, no such guide is currently known for the skating work.

ART PIONEER

Artist Charles Lees lived from 1800 to 1860 and was born in Cupar, Fife. He worked as a drawing master in Edinburgh before moving to portrait painting, apparently under the tuition of Sir Henry Raeburn, one of Scotland's greatest portrait painters. He was elected to the Royal Scottish Academy in 1830, and in 1834 he travelled to Rome and Venice.

There has been little academic research published on the painter, but he became famous for painting large outdoor sporting scenes, mixing landscape and portraits.

The Scottish National Portrait Gallery bought The Golfers - Grand Match at Golf in 2002, along with studies for the painting.

The gallery's director, James Holloway, noted Lees pioneered the use of photographs to help paint people featured in the scene. Like other artists he sold engraving rights to the paintings, possibly making more money from engravings than the original painting.