AN ICONIC painting by John Emms of New Forest buckhounds has sold for more than £112,000 at an auction in the USA.

The 24-inch by 30-inch picture, entitled New Forest Buckhounds and a Terrier in Their Lodges after the Hunt, was sold at Sotheby’s in New York for 162,500 US dollars.

It had been expected to fetch between 150,000 and 250,000 dollars.

Although the picture is undated, Sotheby’s are confident that it was painted by Lyndhurst-based Emms in the 1890s.

According to auctioneers Sotheby’s: “Emms painted the New Forest buckhounds and foxhounds on numerous occasions.

“The size of the dogs in this painting and the set of steel and leather couples lying by the hunting whip on the red coat suggest that they are buckhounds.”

Since Emms’s death in 1912, the value of his work has steadily soared. At Bonhams in New York on February 14, 2006, a new world auction record for an Emms work was set when his 1898 oil painting, New Forest Foxhounds, sold for £588,737.