THE long-lost drawing that launched the career of Norman Thelwell, famous for his images of little girls on fat, temperamental ponies, has gone under the hammer.

It made £6,750 when it was sold by Wright Manley at Beeston. The 1952 cartoon – showing a blacksmith inquiring sarcastically, Ow do they feel then? as a girl tries out the shoes he has just fitted to her pony – was the first of 1,500 the Birkenhead-born artist had published in the magazine Punch.

It was the start of a career in books, newspapers and magazines which lasted until 1976, making jockey Penelope and her four-legged friend as famous as their creator.

Thelwell kept his original artwork and few were ever sold during his lifetime – so when a retrospective of his work was held to mark his 80th birthday in 2003 without the first cartoon, it was assumed it had been lost.

The exhibition ran for two months at Southampton City Art Gallery before moving to London and then touring the country in 2004 – but Ow do they feel then? was conspicuous by its absence.

But, all along, the cartoon had been hanging on the living room wall at the Wirral home of horse-lover Mrs Marla Johnson, five miles away from Thelwell's birthplace.

Mrs Johnson, 71, decided to part with the historic first cartoon, which had been given to her more than 30 years ago by a friend who bought it at a shop in the Cotswolds.

Bill Witter of auctioneers Wright Manley said he thought the cartoon would sell for around £3,000.

Mrs Johnson said: “I read about the exhibition in Horse & Hound and how the first cartoon he drew for Punch was unfortunately lost. But I thought, 'no it's not, it's hanging on my wall’.”

She contacted the organisers and, belatedly, the historic cartoon joined the exhibition – fittingly when it opened at the Williamson Art Gallery and Museum in Birkenhead.

A horse lover all her life, Mrs Johnson worked at a prestigious riding school in Berkshire before returning to Liverpool where she founded the Alder School of Motoring.

There was strong competition from a London Gallery but the picture was bought by a local collector.