(London) The famous painting going to the game by British painter Laurence Stephen Lowry was sold Wednesday evening for 7.8 million pounds sterling ($12 million) at the museum dedicated to the artist near Manchester, where it can continue to be exhibited to the public.
Updated yesterday at 4:03 p.m.
The work dating from 1953 represents characters, figurines in the shape of matches characteristic of the artist, going to the stadium in the North West of England.
It went under the hammer for 6.6 million pounds, but the price with costs reached 7.8 million pounds, according to the auction house Christie’s.
The buyer is the Lowry Museum in Salford, near Manchester, where the work has been exhibited since the establishment opened in 2000.
“Tonight, thanks to an incredibly generous gift from the Law Family Charitable Foundation”, British financier Andrew Law and his wife Zoë, “we are delighted to have purchased going to the game said the facility’s general manager, Julia Fawcett.
“We look forward to bringing it home to Salford, where it can continue to delight and attract visitors to the Andrew and Zoë Law Galleries at the Lowry,” she added.
The painting, estimated by Christie’s at between £5m and £8m, was put up for sale by the Professional Footballers’ Association Foundation, which acquired it in 1999 for just under £2m.
The foundation had justified in September the sale of the painting by the fact that it had “no longer any guaranteed income”.
The sale of the famous painting had raised concerns about the possibility of the public being able to admire it. The mayor of Salford, Paul Dennett, had thus pleaded for a temporary export ban to prevent him from leaving the country.