Fag Packet Art Gets £4,500

The Manchester Evening News reports that a cigarette packet featuring a sketch by LS Lowry has fetched £4,500 at auction. The Salford artist used his empty pack as a canvas for a drawing after smoking the 10 Woodbines. He gave the drawing - which measures just two and a half by four and a quarter inches and depicts matchstick-men footballers against an industrial landscape - to his friend and fellow artist Arthur Delaney, who kept it until he died in 1987. The packet, which would have cost 4d (less than 2p) in the 1930s, was sold to a collector but was back on the market yesterday when it fetched £500 above its estimated price tag. Stephen Sparrow, from Nantwich auctioneers Peter Wilson, said the sketch was `unmistakably' Lowry's hand and had been in Delaney's family until five years ago, when it was spotted by a collector buying some of his paintings. (For full source and full article click the Headline). Irish Art