A PAINTING of a village that inspired Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights will go under the hammer here on July 1 at an estimated price of nearly 180,000 pounds.

The painting by L.S. Lowry is one of the artist's four works included in Bonhams sale of 20th century British art.

The landscape that provided the inspiration for the present work was a place called the Witherns, near Haworth in West Yorkshire. This location has become intimately tied with the Bronte sisters who were born and brought up in the village of Haworth in the mid-19th century. It is thought that the derelict farmhouse at Top Witherns was the inspiration for "Wuthering Heights".

This painting captures well the oppressive unbroken off-white of the sky, its unexpected brightness serving to contrast with the dark landscape below, the smudge of pollution hinted at in the corners, the art house said.

Laurence Stephen Lowry (1 November 1887 – 23 February 1976) was an English artist born on Barrett Street, Stretford, Lancashire. Stretford is now in the borough of Trafford, in Greater Manchester. Many of his drawings and paintings depict nearby Salford and surrounding areas, including Pendlebury where he lived and worked for over forty years at 117 Station Road, opposite St. Mark's RC Church.

Lowry is famous for painting scenes of life in the industrial districts of northern England during the early 20th century. He had a distinctive style of painting and is best known for urban landscapes peopled with human figures often referred to as "matchstick men". He also painted mysterious unpopulated landscapes, brooding portraits, and the secret 'marionette' works (the latter only found after his death). Because of his use of stylised figures and the lack of weather effects in many of his landscapes he is sometimes characterised as a naïve[1] 'Sunday painter' although this is not the position of the galleries that have organised retrospectives of his works.

Wuthering Heights is Emily Brontë's only novel. It was first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, and a posthumous second edition was edited by her sister Charlotte. The name of the novel comes from the Yorkshire manor on the moors on which the story centers (as an adjective, Wuthering is a Yorkshire word referring to turbulent weather). The narrative tells the tale of the all-encompassing and passionate, yet thwarted, love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them and many around them.

Now considered a classic of English literature, Wuthering Heights met with mixed reviews by critics when it first appeared, mainly because of the narrative's stark depiction of mental and physical cruelty.[1][2] Though Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre was originally considered the best of the Brontë sisters' works, many subsequent critics of Wuthering Heights argued that its originality and achievement made it superior.[3] Wuthering Heights has also

given rise to many adaptations and inspired works, including films, radio, television dramatisations,

a musical by Bernard J. Taylor and songs (notably

the hit "Wuthering Heights" by Kate Bush), ballet and opera.