TWO Picasso etchings are among 36 works of art being put up for auction by Town Hall chiefs.

As revealed last year by The Bolton News, Bolton Council wants to sell some of its 400,000- plus exhibits to make more of the collection accessible to researchers, academics and the public.

Museum bosses, who have spent 18 months drawing up a list of items to let go, are hoping to raise £500,000 from offloading the works.

The money raised will be used to reorganise the catalogued collection, improving storage and making it easier for academics to access the works.

Two of the the pieces expected to fetch the most at this summer’s auctions — John Evert Millais’ The Somnambulist and Robert Gremell Hutchison’s Sea Gulls and Sapphire Seas—were sharing wall space with the borough’s three works by Thomas Moran until last night.

Cllr Elaine Sherrington, Executive member for adult services, said: “These paintings both fall outside our core collection and are wholly owned by Bolton Council.

“The sale of these items will safeguard the future of the rest of the collection and allow us to open it up to academics and students.

“A lot of the time, students from Bolton go to Manchester to see the collections there but we want them to look at the collections we have here in Bolton, which is fantastic.”

Works from the three main strands of the museum’s collection — the Egyptology collection, the 20th Century art collection and the Bolton History collection — have not been included in the sale.

Some of the items on the original list of 41 have been taken off, including one because it was discovered to have been a Victorian copy.

When auction houses and art experts were given access to the collection, they were unanimous in their opinion that A Proposal, an 18th Century work by Thomas Rowlandson, was not an original.

Stephanie Crossley, assistant director of culture and community services at the council, said: “We would obviously not want to put that up after it was agreed that it was most probably a copy.

“Other paintings, after doing some more research, were found to have a Bolton connection and we have taken those off the final list as well.”

The sale of any items is strictly governed by national bodies. Ms Crossley added: “This has not been a willynilly process, it is the result of a year-and-a-half’s work.”

Currently, the borough’s vast museum collection is stored at several sites, including the Enterprise Centre at Lincoln Mill, just outside Bolton town centre.

But, having spent the past four years making an extensive catalogue of all the items Bolton has, and with culture budgets being squeezed as part of the Government’s spending cuts, staff were asked to look at what could be sold.

Under the plans, Lincoln Mill will be transformed into a new storage space.

Ms Crossley said: “We want something that can be easily opened and staffed by appointment and at the minute Lincoln Mill is not either.”

Bolton Museum and Art Gallery is one of the top 10 tourist attractions in Greater Manchester, bringing in more visitors than the Imperial War Museum North at Salford Quays.

See some of the paintings which will be auctioned, at theboltonnews.co.uk