THREE oil paintings by an artist who committed suicide in Salisbury at the age of 29 are set to fetch around £200,000 at an auction.

The pictures are by Christopher Wood, who died after jumping under a London-bound train.

All three paintings were owned and treasured by playwright- composer Sir Noel Coward until his death at the age of 73, on March 26, 1973.

They are among 73 pictures once owned by Sir Noel that are expected to fetch about half a million pounds at Christie’s in London on Thursday March 19.

The Christopher Wood paintings are the most valuable works in the Coward collection.

His 1926 painting Fishing Village, Cornwall, is set to fetch between £70,000 and £100,000. His 1925 picture Paris Square is likely to sell for between £50,000 and £80,000 while another 1925 painting, St Cloud, is estimated to fetch between £30,000 and £50,000.

Christopher Wood was born on April 7, 1901. His family moved to Broad Chalke in 1926 at around the time he painted the pictures now up for sale.

According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: “On 21 August (1930) he (Wood) went to Salisbury, met his mother and sister Elizabeth (Betty), then jumped under the London-bound train at Salisbury station and was instantly killed.”

He was buried at All Saints’ Church, Broad Chalke on August 23, 1930.

The Oxford DNB adds: “[Wood] received little critical recognition during his life, though the memorial exhibition of 1938 at the New Burlington Galleries, London, brought him considerable posthumous attention.

He was almost forgotten until the 1970s, when the first of several critical re-examinations of his work took place.

The Oxford DNB adds: “Today he is acknowledged for playing an essential if limited role in establishing links between modernity, landscape and concepts of the ‘primitive’.”

Welsh composer Ivor Novello bequeathed a nine inches by 12 inches pencil, watercolour and gouache picture titled Frigate to Sir Noel Coward.

The picture is expected to sell for between £2,000 and £3,000 at the auction.