One of LS Lowry’s earliest “Going to …” paintings will go on sale for the first time in 50 years, ahead of an anticipated multimillion-pound auction. The Salford artist is well known for his depictions of football, but Going to the Match from 1928 shows Salfordians heading off to a rugby game. In this painting, the red flag seen flying over the ground, as well as the red scarves worn by several people in the crowd, hints at the Salford Red Devils – Lowry’s local team, which formed in 1873. Going to the Match will be offered with an estimate of £2-3m as part of Sotheby’s inaugural British Art: Modern/Contemporary live-stream auction this summer. The painting will be taken to New York, Edinburgh and Dublin for public exhibitions before going on view at Sotheby’s in New Bond Street, London, from 22–29 June. Lowry liked painting people on their way to or from places. His 1943 classic, Going to Work, depicts the Mather & Platt engineering works in Manchester as a crowd of matchstick-like workers flow into the factory. An earlier work, Coming from the Mill, shows workers returning home at their end of their shift. Frances Christie, the deputy chairman of Sotheby’s UK & Ireland, said: “Lowry was the ultimate onlooker, and in his compositions focusing on sporting subjects, it is the crowd that fascinated him above all else. In this phenomenal painting, the figures lean forward in unison, emphasising their common purpose in being drawn to the rugby posts clearly visible on the left-hand side of the canvas. “The pre-match sense of energy, excitement and anticipation is palpable and will resonate with any sports lover today, almost 100 years after it was painted.” The work was created in the same year that Lowry, then aged 41, finished a 13-year stint attending art schools part-time – starting with evening classes at the Manchester School of Art and ending at the Salford School for art – while still working his daily job as a rent collector. The influence of his art teacher in Manchester, the French impressionist Adolphe Valette, is demonstrated in the early masterpiece, as Lowry takes up the mantle set by Manet, Pissarro, Degas and Van Gogh in their recording of modernity from the 1870s. In France, the focus was on the parks, boulevards, tramcars and grittier aspects of life on the edges of the city, while Lowry took Manchester’s industrial environment and atmosphere as his lifelong subject.