Sale: ‘A Life in Pictures: the collection of Lord and Lady Attenborough’

Location: Sotheby’s, 34-35 New Bond Street, London W1; tel: +44 (0)20 7293 5000

Date: Wednesday (November 11). On view on Saturday and Sunday, noon to 5pm; Monday and Tuesday 9am to 4.30pm. Catalogue on line at www.sothebys.com

Need to know: This collection of 50 paintings and one sculpture was amassed over a 60-year period by the actor, director and producer Richard Attenborough and his wife Sheila. Their first significant purchase was a Graham Sutherland, bought from the Manchester gallery of Andras Kalman. In the introduction to the sale catalogue, Lord Attenborough recalls how the then impecunious couple eschewed carpets and curtains in order to spend their money on paintings, most acquired from major London galleries such as the Redfern, Lefevre and Browse & Darby. All the works on offer are by British artists and could realise a total of more than £2m.

Highlights: LS Lowry’s “Old Houses” (1948) leads the sale with an estimate of £300,000-£500,000. The 19x25in oil, bought by the Attenboroughs in London in 1963, shows a typical snapshot of life in run-down postwar Manchester, with the artist’s trademark stooping figures and grim facades. Of two Graham Sutherland paintings on offer, the best is “Thorn Head” (1947), a much-exhibited abstract that relates to a crucifixion scene that Sutherland painted for a church in Northampton the previous year. “Thorn Head” could realise up to £250,000, while a selection of 13 works by the unofficial war artist Christopher Nevinson is led by “The Battlefields of Britain”, an evocative oil giving a bird’s-eye view of a landscape through clouds (£100,000-£150,000). Other Nevinsons, drypoint etchings of scenes from the first world war, are on offer from £1,000-£50,000.