OVER the years, I have reported many a trip to Leeds for the annual sale of Yorkshire pictures by Philips auctioneers. Year by year, the title of the sale would slightly change - Yorkshire pictures and painters, Yorkshire pictures and sporting art - but the content would remain similar.

This year there was a big change as Philips has been taken over by international auctioneers Bonhams so, after a break of a year or two, I decided to reacquaint myself.

Bonhams called its sale Yorkshire and Victorian Paintings and had obviously decided to leave well alone - David Hockney did not feature, though a 1975 oil by Brian Shield called Red Sky raised a bid of £800 despite, with stick-like figures and factory chimneys, being very Lowry-like.

The bulk of the offerings were as by tradition - comfortable array of countryside and coastal images from the last but one century.

A lovely little oil by Henry William Banks Davis called A coastal landscape with sheep brought a fetching £2,600. In the catalogue the auctioneers explained the artists Pre-Raphaelite influences, and indeed these were the prettiest sheep, fine-featured and almost intelligent. Cattle fetched more, but sheep are nicer.

Not as nice, though, to someone as the Nymphs Dancing by Mark Senior. This large 1912 oil swirled to £41,000, doubling expectations for the five girls swirling in an ecstatic vortex through a blur of summer wild flowers.

A girl, in similarly curious context, did even better and fetched the highest price. She or someone very like her is almost a fixture at these winter sales. She walks, head with bonnet, alone down a moonlit street (probably wealthy suburban late nineteenth century Leeds). Bare, black trees scratch against a greenish sky, across the road a large isolated house glows with winter windows. She is John Atkinson Grimshaw's recurring fantasy, and here in A Lane Scene fetched £91,000. The auctioneer's top estimate was ten thousand less, so a healthy price for a slightly unhealthy image.

There was another Atkinson Grimshaw, a bright daylight view down into a misty forest. This was estimated at £20,000-£30,000, but was nothing special, did not sell and rather confirms the idea that Mr Grimshaw was a one-trick wonder, a creature of the night.