A RARE drawing of a Paris street scene by a North-East artist who is better known for his mining studies, will go under the hammer this month.

The drawing by Norman Cornish of an elderly woman walking in Montmartre was done for the artist's 1966 Tyne Tees Television programme Cornish on Paris.

Born in Spennymoor in 1919, Cornish was apprenticed at the age of 14 at the Dean and Chapter Colliery, known as the Butcher's Shop.

He spent the next 33 years working in various pits in the North-East, experiences which would shape his paintings.

John Anderson, picture specialist at Anderson and Garland in Newcastle, which is selling the drawing, said Cornish's work is the most avidly collected of any North-East artist, with his work selling for thousands of pounds.

"At first glance it could have been of an old woman in, say, Durham City, but then when we looked at the back we spotted a label explaining that it was from his special visit to Paris for the television programme," he said.

He said that the vast majority of the work by Cornish sold by the firm were his studies of Spennymoor street and bar scenes, or of miners going to or returning from work.

Cornish's preoccupation with mining and the mining community led to him being known as the Pitman Painter.

The drawing of a Paris street scene will go under the hammer on Tuesday, but is available to view from today until Thursday. Cornish's work is also being exhibited at Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens until November 28, which will coincide with his 85th birthday.