A DALES landscape by a famous artist is among the paintings on show in an exhibition of work owned by Lord Lloyd Webber.

Scarborough's John Atkinson Grimshaw's Ghyll Beck at Barden, North Yorkshire, is one of 14 works by the artist owned by the composer of West End classics such as Cats, Phantom of the Opera and Evita.

All of them are on public display at the Royal Academy, in London, for the first time.

The exhibition includes more than 300 works of art the composer has collected over the years with the help of former Antiques Roadshow expert and family friend David Mason.

Grimshaw was the son of a Leeds policeman who worked as a clerk on the railways.

He painted in his spare time, but suffered for his art as his parents were bitterly opposed to his interest on religious grounds. His mother is even said to have thrown his paints in the fire and punished him by turning off the gas in his room.

Once freed of the restrictions following his marriage in 1858, Grimshaw was later renowned for his work in the Lake District and Yorkshire.

Writing in the exhibition catalogue, Lord Lloyd Webber recounted how he missed an opportunity to snap up a masterpiece by another Scarborough artist.

Although he is now reported to be worth an estimated £400m, as a schoolboy Lord Lloyd Webber did not have the £50 asking price for Frederic Lord Leighton's Flaming June, which he saw in a shop in London in the 1960s.

The painting now hangs in an art museum in Puerto Rico and is worth an estimated £7m. It is described as the Mona Lisa of the southern hemisphere.