A PAINTING of a card game from a Nantwich home is expected to fetch £20,000 at auction.

Fine art and antiques from a Nantwich family who are moving house are the stars of auctioneers Peter Wilson’s two-day sale on Wednesday and Thursday November 11 and 12.

Auction specialist Stephen Sparrow: "The family are reluctant to part with things they have owned for many years, but the problem is that there is simply no room for them in the new property.”

Highlight of the collection is an oil painting titled The Loser by Frank Moss Bennett, but to win it will cost the buyer up to £20,000.

Measuring an imposing four feet wide, the work shows a courtyard scene with carousers and a Cavalier walking away dejectedly from a card game, his losing hand of cards falling from his grasp.

Liverpool-born Bennett (1874-1953) painted a range of historic genre paintings that were set in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.

His favourite subjects were tavern scenes, hunting scenes, everyday life, and Elizabethan and Stuart historical figures and the present work is among his best.

Another oil of a period setting is by the French artist Eugene Benjamin Fichel (1826-1895).

Titled La Forge du Roi Louis XVI, it shows King Louis seated in the unlikely surroundings of a forge trying out a padlock which has been made by the blacksmith who stands alongside.

Another French artist, the sculptor Marcel Debut, is represented in the collection by a bronze of a standing figure titled The Ploughman, which is also estimated at between £4,000 and 6,000.

For further information contact the auctioneers on 01270 623878 or auctions@peterwilson.co.uk.