Overlooked LS Lowry painting re-emerges after 70 years

Christie's to auction The Mill, Pendlebury, which has never been on public display

An important LS Lowry painting that has never been publicly exhibited or featured in any books on the artist has emerged 70 years after its young British owner set off for a new life in the US.

Leonard D Hamilton was a Manchester grammar school boy who studied at Balliol College, Oxford, and Trinity College, Cambridge, before moving to the US in 1949. He was a brilliant researcher who played an important role in the discovery of the structure of DNA.