AN ART collection owned by renowned artist David Blackburn is going under the hammer.

Bonhams in Chester will next week auction off pieces from the Huddersfield artist’s personal collection.

It features work the artist admired, including photos of LS Lowry and paintings collected during different phases of his career.

David, 73, who was born in Huddersfield and lived at Crosland Moor, won a scholarship to Huddersfield School of Art in the mid 1950s.

Four years later he went to study textile design at the Royal College of Art in London.

He is now well known for his vibrantly coloured pastel landscapes of the Yorkshire countryside.

His work featured at the Hart Gallery, Islington, in 2010, in the exhibition, David Blackburn: Works From The Last Decade.

He currently lives in the Meltham area.

David’s own work comes up regularly at auction, but this eclectic collection contains none of his own work. Instead, it features paintings of artists acquired over many years and different phases in his own development as an artist.

There is a small collection of photographs of David taken by the photographer Sefton Samuels whose studio in Altringham, Cheshire, was favoured by L S Lowry. There are five photographs of Lowry, including one signed by Samuels, included in the collection.

A spokesman for Bonhams at Chester said: “David’s personal collection is a diverse mixture of paintings which he collected because they fitted in with his own landscape ethos: contemporary artists such as Prunella Clough, William James (Bill) Fergusson, John Hartman, Norman Adams and Stephen Barraclough sit beside local Yorkshire artists such as Trevor Stubley, Tom Wood, Malcolm Whittaker, Peter Hammond, Joseph O Reilly together with work by his students clearly demonstrating Blackburn’s own artistic influence.

“David’s interest in the landscape is illustrated by a small print collection which ranges from Old Master etchings by Adrian Ostade and Nicholas Berchem to 19th and 20th Century artist such as Thomas Creswick, Pierre Bonnard, Segonzac, Joseph Webb, Frank Short, Gerald Leslie Brockhurst and Sir David Young Cameron.”

David’s paintings transform and abstract the Huddersfield landscape and by using layer upon layer of coloured chalks the landscapes gain a luminous quality.

While travelling in Australia and Canada in the 1970s and 80s his paintings took on the wide horizons, big skies and colours synonymous with those countries.

He was recognised by critics such as Kenneth Clark and Herbert Read and has been collected by both public galleries and private collectors.