The Lowry painting inspired by Bronte's Wuthering Heights

A Lowry painting inspired by Emily Bronte's gothic love story Wuthering Heights is expected to fetch £180,000 at auction.

L S Lowry painted the picture after the death of his mother and "unselfconsciously" references Bronte's work by using the landscape of 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-nineteenth century and it is thought that the derelict farmhouse at Top Witherns was the inspiration for Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.

The painting makes a departure from Lowry's signature 'stick man' street scenes.

Matthew Wilcox, a spokesman for Bonhams, said: "Lowry is famed for paintings of the industrial north west, where the crowded scenes portray the sense of loneliness and detachment.

"It is a fascinating contrast therefore to observe his take on a landscape equally bleak for its want of life and vast spaces.

"Wuthering Heights was Emily Bronte's definitive work of the Yorkshire moors and the painting captures the desolation and emptiness felt in the book.

"Her line 'In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society' sums it up perfectly.

"It obviously inspired him and it's really interesting to see the contrast to his more conventional work."

The painting, one of four pieces of Lowry's art for sale, will go under the hammer on July 1 at Bonhams New Bond Street Sale of 20th Century Art.