LS Lowry's Three Children will be among the top lots of Sotheby's Made in Britain sale in London on March 16.

The work appears to be a study and features three of Lowry's trademark matchstick figures against a white background.

LS Lowry's Three Children is a small scale work

It's valued at £40,000-60,000 ($57,895-86,842).

Lowry is among the UK's best loved painters, famous for his idiosyncratic scenes of northern life. His painting The Football Match sold for a record £5.6m ($8.1m) in a 2011 sale.

Patrick Heron's Violet Painting with Orange, Lemon and Black: April - May 1964 is offered with an identical estimate of £40,000-60,000 ($57,895-86,842).

The painting is a prime example of the influence of the New York expressionists on Heron's work, which can be seen from the mid-1950s onwards.

Sotheby's comments: "Paintings such as Violet Painting With Orange, Lemon and Black: April - May 1964 are symbolic of a new found confidence in British art, inspired as it was by American art but sure, too, of its ambitions.

"The colours that Heron adopted during the mid-60s certainly reflect an awareness of both Pop and American Hard-Edge Abstraction, both of which - albeit to different ends - used colour in explosive fashion."

The sale will also feature work from Lucian Freud, Grayson Perry and Henry Moore among others.

Click here to take a look at all our art and photography memorabilia for sale.

Please sign up to our free newsletter to receive exciting news about art and photography auctions.