'Lost' Frank Carmichael picture sells for more than £100,000

A RARE lost painting whose Derby owners "would have been happy to sell for £300" has been snapped up for more than £100,000 at auction.

The Frank Carmichael work was thought to have been lost forever so when it surfaced in Derby. Collectors were soon battling it out to own The Church at Bancroft.

James Lewis, auctioneer at Bamfords in Derby, where the piece was sold, said: "When the people brought it in they had no idea how much it was worth.

"They would have been happy to sell it for two or three hundred pounds.

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"All we told them was that we would be able to auction it for them no problem, so they got quite a shock yesterday.

"Every now and again you get the chance as an auctioneer to sell something like this. It was very exciting."

Before the picture had even come up for sale a keen collector put in a bid of £17,000.

The work, a first draft of a oil painting which now hangs in a museum in Canada, was created by the celebrated Canadian artist Frank Carmichael in 1930 with an original asking price of $350.

Carmichael, who was the youngest of the famous Group of Seven artists in Canada, was known for his stunning landscapes of Northern Ontario but also plied his trade in the world of advertising.

The piece is thought to have come to the UK in 1931, whereupon it promptly disappeared.

Mr Lewis said: "Carmichael is a very, very important Canadian artist and his paintings often sell for between £25,000 or £30,000.

"Most people were out of the bidding on this piece at £28,000 and £30,000 but the others just wouldn't give up.

"The last two phone bidders were both from Canada, so the painting is going home."

Later the same day, a medal awarded to the captain who saved Scott of the Antarctic on his first trip to the Pole more than a century ago also went under the hammer.

The medal was sent down from Scotland by a direct descendant of Captain Henry McKay, who piloted the Terra Nova to save the icebound ship, Discovery, in 1904.

The bronze medal, along with a coin from the time and a sketch of a three-masted ship drawn by McKay, also went to Canada with a winning bid of £5,000.