AN oil painting by a renowned Cumbrian artist which was owned by David Bowie until his death earlier this year has sold for nearly £1/4 million at auction.

The picture of St Ives Harbour in Cornwall, which was painted by Winifred Nicholson, fetched more than three times the expected figure when it went under the hammer at Sotheby's in London.

It was part of a 500-piece art collection owned by Bowie which sold for nearly £33 million at the two-day sale with Nicholson's panting proving one of the most valuable

Much treasured by Bowie until his death in New York on January 10, the sale of St Ives Harbour set a new world record for a work of art by Winifred Nicholson who lived and worked near Brampton.

The picture, painted by Mrs Nicholson in 1928 when she was in her mid-thirties, had been expected to sell for between £50,000 and £70,000.

But the bidding was so enthusiastic that those cautious pre-sale estimates were swiftly overtaken and the painting was finally snapped up by a mystery bidder for £245,000 the first time a Winifred Nicholson painting had fetched £200,000 or more at an auction .

Mrs Nicholson’s painting turned out to be one of the more valuable of the 500 works in David Bowie’s art collection which sold for nearly £33 million at the two-day auction.

In 1924 Winifred Nicholson, grand-daughter of the ninth Earl of Carlisle, bought Bankshead built over the remains of a Roman mile-castle on Hadrian’s Wall. She lived and worked there until her death in 1981 at the age of 87.

Winifred Nicholson left £186,402 in her will and bequeathed her 1930 painting, Hallbankgate, to Tullie House in Carlisle which also houses her painting, Bathtime , which features her children, Jake and Kate, in the bath.

Until the David Bowie sale the world auction record for a Winifred Nicholson painting was £168,000, the sum paid at Christie’s in London on 2007 for her 1952 oil painting, Over The Sea To Eigg.

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The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says of Winifred Nicholson: "from the 1930s until her death she was an ardent Christian Scientist. This led her to shun alcohol and medical establishments and to follow a practical, independent and disciplined life.

"She designed and made her own clothes, sometimes colouring the fabric with home-made dyes: this gave the articles a most individual style and character.Her pea-pod soup and her manner of driving were legendary."