Salford’s mayor has urged super-rich footballers from the Manchester region to buy an £8m LS Lowry painting and allow it to remain on public display.
Lowry’s painting, Going to the Match, is being auctioned in October by the Players’ Foundation, the professional footballers’ charity.
The 1953 painting had been loaned to Salford’s Lowry Arts Centre, where it was on display.
The PF said the financial crisis meant it had to sell “in the interests of our beneficiaries” as it “no longer has any income guaranteed, so we have had to completely reposition”.
Now Salford mayor Paul Dennett is calling on footballers – including players from Manchester City and Manchester United – to club together to save it for the area.
Dennett said finding £8m-plus “wouldn’t be too difficult” for the highly-paid stars.
He used Twitter to makes the point, saying: “Wouldn’t it be truly tragic if this iconic LS Lowry painting… was sold to a private collector and ceased to be free to access by people here in the City of Salford as it has been for the past 22 years?
“I’d like to make a personal plea for the footballing community here in Greater Manchester to look at retaining this painting for the people of Greater Manchester.
“There’s a lot of money in that community, so finding £8m-plus wouldn’t be too difficult.”
Lowry spent much of his life in Salford.
Going To The Match won the painter first prize in a 1953 exhibition. It was last auctioned in 1999, when the Professional Footballers’ Association Charity – as the PF was known before it cut all ties with the association – acquired it for £2m.
The work will be sold at Christie’s in London on 19 October.
Nick Orchard, head of modern British and Irish art at the auction house, said Lowry “mastered a distance in his art that offered him the opportunity to present his viewers with an entire scene unfolding before them”.
“There is no greater example of this than Going to the Match,” he added.