A WOMAN who once played in a York park depicted in the "lost" LS Lowry painting today backed moves to bring it back to the city.

The race is on to raise funds to buy the Lowry painting, which shows a view of York from a bridge in Melrosegate complete with his trademark "matchstick" figures.

It is expected to fetch £80,000 at auction later this month.

The City Art Gallery, which could once have bought the painting for just £50, would like to re-unite it with another by Lowry of Clifford's Tower which currently hangs in the gallery.

In the present climate of cuts, the City of York would be unable to bid for it out of its own budget.

But as reported in later editions of yesterday's Evening Press, York Civic Trust chairman John Shannon called for a concerted effort to find grants from other bodies to help meet the costs - and pledged a contribution from the trust to any rescue fund.

That call was today backed by Kathleen Andrews, 66, of Haxby, who lived in the area featured in the painting as a child.

She said: "It would be a shame not to have it here. I'd like to see it kept in York."She said she played as a child in the playground shown in the painting.

And the two white huts were used by the Gleneagles youth club and by Tang Hall School.

Mrs Andrews said she was surprised to open the Evening Press last night and see the for the first time the Lowry work.She said: "I said to my husband: 'That's where I used to play as a child'. I couldn't believe it.

"I recognised it, just like that. It is really accurate."

The City of York commissioned Lowry (1887-1976), one of the most important and easily-recognisable twentieth century artists from the North-East, to paint a view of the city in 1953.

It was bought by a York solicitor who died in 1987, and will be sold by auctioneers Bonhams of London on March 25.

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