A Painting by Jewish artist Frank Auerbach is expected to fetch up to £800,000 when it is sold at Sotheby’s in London next week.

The piece, entitled Morning – Mornington Place, has not been seen in public since the early 1970s, when it was bought by an Italian family in Milan, and remained in storage ever since.

According to Sotheby’s contemporary art specialist, Oliver Barker, finding the work was “like unpacking a time capsule. Even then I could see the radiance of it.”

Mr Auerbarch, 82, was born in Germany but has lived in London since 1939, when he arrived on the Kindertransport.