A COASTAL scene painted by one of the country’s most successful playwrights is expected to fetch hundreds of pounds at auction.

Off Shore Shoreham was painted by actor, director, singer and cabaret performer Sir Noel Coward in 1950.

The 22cm by 31cm oil on canvas painting shows a ship in choppy waters off the Sussex coastline and is expected to be sold for £500 next month. It will go under the hammer at Halls’ salerooms in Battlefield, Shrewsbury, on March 18.

It is claimed Coward was advised on oil painting technique by wartime Prime Minister, and fellow painter, Sir Winston Churchill during a visit to the playwright’s mountaintop home estate in Jamaica.

An allergy meant that he had to wear plastic gloves when painting with oil.

In 1973, 15 years after Coward’s death, 30 of his paintings were sold for charity raising £786,000.

Coward was awarded an honorary doctor of letters degree by the University of Sussex in 1972.

He believed his personal life should be kept private and years earlier, while batting away questions about his homosexuality, he joked: “There are still a few old ladies in Worthing who don’t know.”

In his diary, Coward was less complimentary about commercial art.

An extract said: “Compared with the pretentious muck in some London galleries my amateur efforts appear brilliant.”

He even went so far to criticise some of the most famous paintings in the world, saying: “Mona Lisa looks as if she has just been sick, or is about to be.”

Allan Darwell, head of the art department at Halls, said he was confident the painting would attract keen interest at next month’s auction.

He said: “There is a buoyant market for pictures by Churchill and Coward.”

For more details visit hallsgb.com/fine-art