A painting of a Westcountry harbour scene will go under the hammer in London next week.

The William Lee-Hankey masterpiece, titled Torquay Harbour, is expected to fetch around £5,000 at auction at Christie's on March 12.

According to Christie's, the oil sketch of Beacon Hill had probably been produced in the 1920s or 30s.

"This is traditional of the Newlyn School of Art and Cornish Impressionist tradition," said Jane Oakley, head of sales at Christie's, the world's largest auction house.

"The South West was the main centre of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism when the movement hit Britain.

"This painting is a lot more developed than earlier Impressionist. It comes 50 years after the style was developed in France in the 1870s and 1980s, but it is very influenced by it."

Lee-Hankey specialised in landscapes, character studies and portraits of pastoral life, particularly in studies of mothers with young children.

He was born in Chester in 1869 and died in 1952.

The painter studied his craft at the Chester School of Art under Walter Schroeder, the Royal College of Art and later in Paris where he became influenced by the work of Jules Bastien-Lepage.

Lee-Hankey first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1896 and was president of the Royal Sketch Club from 1902 to 1904.

He stayed in France in the early 1900s, painting many of his works in Brittany, Normandy and the Cote d'Azure, capturing a peasant lifestyle which had already disappeared in England.

Lee-Hankey was a member of the Newlyn School, a group of English artists based in the titular village in Cornwall who were themselves influenced by the romantic poets such as Wordsworth and Keats.

He also served with the Artists' Rifles during the Great War from 1915 to 1918.