A PAINTING by a Victorian artist is expected to set a record when it is auctioned later this month.

The painting, a scene from Leeds, is the second by Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-1893) discovered in the North-East in the past year.

The first, a view of Hampstead Hill, fetched £149,000 in December, the highest price fetched by an artwork auctioned in Newcastle.

The Leeds painting belonged to a recently deceased Newcastle man, whose executors had sent his posessions to a fine art sale at Anderson & Garland auction house.

Andrew McCoull, the firm's managing partner, said: "It is almost unbelievable that two paintings by this increasingly acclaimed artist should turn up on Tyneside in the space of only a few months."

He said that Grimshaw's work was enjoying a huge popularity with fine art collectors, and usually only turned up in big London sales of Victorian paintings.

Although he was born into poverty and did not train as an artist, Grimshaw's work proved so popular that he was able to buy Knostrop Hall, a Jacobean mansion near Leeds, when he was 34.

Mr McCoull said: "The hall was to inspire many of his pictures and it was out of Knostrop that he evolved his classic formula - a moonlit road, a house behind a wall, and a solitary, usually servant, girl figure walking beneath stark, leafless trees.

"Our painting has all these features and bears the date 1888, and his title of Autumn Gold."

Also in the firm's sale, which takes place on Tuesday, June 17, is a painting by Norman Cornish, one of the most important mining artists from County Durham, which is expected to fetch thousands of pounds.