Children playing cricket on wasteland in Broughton, Salford.
Their rubbish-strewn pitch is overshadowed by a run-down tenement building with cracked and boarded up windows.
Plumes of smoke rise from chimneys indicating life despite the ramshackle state of the croft and buildings.
The image, 'A Cricket Match', was painted by L S Lowry in 1938.
The last time it appeared on the market was in 1996, when it set a then world record for a Lowry work, and was sold at auction for £282,000.
It was bought by Neil and Gina Smith - a reflection of their passion for the sport.
Neil grew up in Wilmslow and later lived in Stockport, before moving to America, where he met Gina, and worked in management consultancy.
Before being acquired by the Smiths, it had been sold in 1939 by Lowry's dealer the Lefevre Gallery and was kept in a private collection owned by a family from Newcastle of Tyne.
On June 18, the work will be auctioned at Sotheby's, with an estimate of £800,000 to £1.2m.
But first, the painting will be on show for five days at The Lowry arts centre at Salford Quays, from May 23 to 27.
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The display locally will be just before the start of the ICC Cricket World Cup, which will see six games hosted at Lancashire's Old Trafford ground, including a semi-final.
Simon Hucker, senior specialist in Modern & Post-War Art at Sotheby's said: "This outstanding painting is in many ways a 'classic' Lowry - depicting the hard life of the industrial cities at the turn of the century - and yet the subject within the subject of a cricket makes it truly rare within his oeuvre.
"Coinciding with the return of the Cricket World Cup to the UK presents a fantastic opportunity for collectors to acquire a different element of Lowry's world view.
"It is a really good Lowry. If feels like a natural scene, but it has all kinds of things going on, it leads your eye from one thing to another.
It is really very complex, the way he controls colour, white, black, dirty green. He is very good at creating a mood through colour
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"A lot is happening, the kids are joyous, playing, and the guys are smoking and chatting.
"Lowry is a very important figure in art, but there are different types of Lowrys - the well known industrial settings, but also seascapes, pictures of different, often odd, isolated figures, and empty landscapes.
"There is interest in his work, not just in the UK, but America, and Canada."
Lowry's interest in sporting events was always less for the game and more for the spectacle - and for the crowds matches drew.
Cricket only featured in a handful of paintings by Lowry. He painted a formal cricket match, with players in whites, just once.
A drawing of a cricket match by Lowry was bought by the MCC and is displayed at Lord's Cricket Ground in London.
The work up for sale could not be further than from the hallowed turf of Old Trafford, - depicting a match on rough land in a bleak city setting.
But, say Sotheby's: "Painted in an almost ghostly pale pink, the structure has an exquisitely haunting presence."
They add: "Children are an essential narrative element in Lowry's work, providing a counterpoint to the burdensome life of their parents and a reminder of the joy that for the adults had become elusive or fleeting.
"In this painting Lowry gives the children the centre stage, dotted around the composition as enthusiastic players and spectators straining for a view.
"The only adults in the painting are a group of men smoking and passing the time over a broken wall, oblivious to what is going on behind them."
They conclude: "At first glance, 'A Cricket Match' appears to be a simple moment in daily life. Testament to Lowry's place as a painter, the landscape stands as a metaphor for the industrial experience - one that can resonate across the globe, much in the same way as the game of cricket itself."
Bill Clarke, who owns an art gallery in Hale, said: "The first painting I bought was a different oil painting of a cricket match by Lowry. It was a match in front of a mill in an industrial scene. I sold it to John Paul Getty II. It has since been sold on again.
"I do think the one up for auction will reach its estimate price. There is always a lot of interest in Lowry paintings with a sporting theme. His work 'Going to the Match' was bought by the Professional Footballers' Association in for £1.9m in 1999 - that would be worth £7m to £8m now."
Claire Stewart, curator of The Lowry collection, at The Lowry arts centre, said: "This is a real treat. The painting is a quintessential Lowry scene, captured from a distance, showing children playing on wasteland behind rows of terraced houses.
"We have a drawing in our collection called Houses in Broughton which shows the same setting and is how we were able to identify the location of this work."
The most expensive Lowry paintings were 'Piccadilly Circus', which fetched £5.6m in 2011 but only £5.1m when sold again in 2014; and The Football Match, sold in in 2011, also for £5.6m.
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