A west Highland seascape painted by a friend of Ring of Bright Water author Gavin Maxwell, is expected to fetch a five-figure sum at auction next month.

The painting, entitled Sea Treasures, was created by the artist Winifred Nicholson as she sat looking from the window of Maxwell’s home at Sandaig on the west Inverness-shire coast looking across to Skye, Eigg and Rum.

The work will be offered by Bonhams in the 20th Century British Art sale on March 9, New Bond Street when it is expected to make £50,000-£70,000.

Maxwell was a Scottish naturalist and author, best known for his work with otters.

He wrote Ring of Bright Water (1960) about how he brought an otter back from Iraq and raised it in Scotland. The book sold more than a million copies and was later made into a film.

Sea Treasures, depicting the view towards the Hebridean islands, represents the same scene that Maxwell had when writing about the otters living there.

Nicholson was an English painter and colourist, married to the well-known painter Ben Nicholson, who was central to the St Ives artists’ colony in the late 1920s.

She is known for developing a personalised, impressionistic style that concentrated on domestic subjects and landscapes.

Colour dominates through the glacial blue of the water and gem-like hues of the sea treasures.

The title Ring of Bright Water was taken from a poem by Nicholson’s close friend, the poet Kathleen Raine, who said in her autobiography that Maxwell had been the love of her life.

Both Nicholson and Raine made annual trips to Maxwell’s Sandaig retreat to live simply, paint and write.