Twenty five 'lost' landscape drawings by the artist Thomas Gainsborough will go on display at York Art Gallery from Friday.

For more than 100 years the drawings lay undiscovered in an album entitled 'Sketches by Sir E Landseer' in the Print Room at Windsor Castle. It was only in 2013, when the art historian Lindsay Stainton identified one of the drawings as a study for Thomas Gainsborough’s most celebrated landscape painting, Cornard Wood, that their true value became known.

They will be on display, alongside other works by Gainsborough, at the gallery from October 1 until February 13 as part of a national tour that also takes in Dublin and Nottingham.

The drawings 'offer an intimate glimpse into the early career of one of Britain’s best-loved artists', a York Art Gallery spokesperson said.

Young Gainsborough: Rediscovered Landscape Drawings, York Art Gallery, October 1 - February 13