York has lost out in the race to bring a Lowry painting home to the city.

But the City Art Gallery has been offered the loan of another painting by the famous Lancashire artist.

The Evening Press reported earlier this month how L S Lowry's 1950s painting of a York industrial scene, A View of York, was to be sold by auction in London tomorrow for between £60,000 and £80,000.

The council, which could once have bought the painting for just £50, was urged to consider raising funds, for example lottery money, to buy it and hang it inside the gallery, alongside a Lowry painting of Clifford's Tower.

But curator Richard Green says the gallery has extremely limited funds available for the purchase of works of art.

"A happy outcome of this matter, however, is that a Yorkshire collector reading the press stories has offered to lend the Gallery his Lowry painting, one of the artist's typical northern cityscapes, dating from 1967.

"This will admirably complement Clifford's Tower and the other Lowry we already own, the excellent Peel Park, Salford, of 1931." He said the donor wanted to remain anonymous.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.