A PICTURE by Spennymoor pitman artist Norman Cornish has reached one of the highest prices ever paid for a pastel at auction.

The scene of two pitmen wending their way to a late shift at the colliery was bought by a Newcastle woman bidding on behalf of her collector son, also from the city.

The woman, who has not been named, paid £6,500 for the pastel, called Road to the Pit.

John Anderson, picture specialist at Newcastle fine art auctioneers Anderson and Garland said: "Her son was from a mining background on his grandfather's side, and wanted to have a reminder of how hard life had been for his ancestors working in the North-East coal industry.

"He had seen the painting before asking his mother to purchase it on his behalf, and thought it as good an example of one of Norman's mining scenes as he'd ever come across. She said it had cost him a lot more than he'd intended, but he was delighted to have got it."

In the same sale, a tiny watercolour by the same artist, picturing children playing in a Spennymoor back street, fetched almost £1,800. An even smaller felt pen drawing of Spennymoor backyards went for £552.

The last few years have seen a huge increase in demand for work by the Spennymoor artist. When his 80th birthday exhibition opened last year, about £70,000 was spent on his work in one day.