Bookmaker's sporting and equine painting collection worth £9.5m to go on auction

A number of valuable racing paintings will be auctioned this month as part of a collection belonging to the late Northern Irish bookmaker and one-time manager of boxer Barry McGuigan, Barney Eastwood.

The collection will be auctioned by Christie's from July 9 and consists of 30 lots, including nine artworks by Sir Alfred James Munnings, who was widely viewed as one of Britain's finest painters of horses.

Among them is 'The Vagabonds', the most valuable painting up for sale with an estimated worth of between £800,000 and £1 million. The entire collection is estimated to be worth more than £9.5m.

Eastwood's collection also includes equine works by 18th and 19th century artists John Frederick Herring, James Ward and John Fergus O'Hea, who depicted packed crowds at Punchestown in 1868.

John Fergus O'Hea: painted packed crowds at Punchestown in 1868

"Sport was a leitmotif through his [Eastwood's] life, both in leisure and business," said Charles Cator, deputy chairman of Christie's International.

"As a teenager he was a talented Gaelic football player and was a member of the Country Tyrone team, which won the All Ireland Minor Championship in 1948 when he was 16.

"He went on to create his highly successful bookmaking business and racing was an abiding interest. So with his love of the turf it was natural he should become interested in sporting pictures."

Eastwood, who sold his Eastwood Bookmakers chain in Northern Ireland to Ladbrokes in a €135m (£117.5m) deal in 2008, began collecting artwork in the mid-1970s, with an emphasis on sport.

"He was a private man and the collection was intensely personal, acquired not for show or prestige but for the enjoyment of himself, his family and those close to him – it was the least ostentatious way of collecting and it was from the heart," added Cator.

"Despite his self-effacing modesty, I hope he would be proud of his remarkable achievement in assembling all the superb works in this catalogue and that he would be flattered and perhaps a little amused to see the sale of his collection take its richly deserved place in the roll call of the great collection sales that inspired him to start his own."

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