READER Leslie Huyton, who tells me he is 99, was a friend of John Gauld, the artist who painted Potter's chemical works, Moses Gate, in 1933.

Mr Huyton, of Green Lane, Bolton, was secretary of Bolton Art Circle for 35 years at the time when Mr Gauld, who died in 1961, was the president.

The painting was on a photograph which another reader, Lilian Longmire, found in her former home in Starcliffe Street, Moses Gate, in 1962.

I said I would be interested to know if anybody knew where the original of the painting was hanging these days.

Mr Huyton does not have the answer and does not recognise this particular picture, but he tells me that John Gauld was a marvellous artist whose works found their way to various galleries, including Bolton Art Gallery.

Mr Gauld was principal of Bolton Municipal School of Art (later Bolton College of Art) from 1930 to 1951.

When he left, he did not have room at his home in Bromwich Street for all his pictures, and a good many of them continued to be stored at the college.

Mr Huyton remembers that, after he died, Mr Gauld's widow told the college that students could have frames if she could have the canvasses. But he says some of the paintings disappeared around that time. Others were rolled-up and kept by the family.

I have also had a call from Phillip Collier of Astley Bridge John Gauld's grandson.

Mr Collier tells me he and his brother have inherited an estimated 40 canvasses - but they have not seen the one which shows Potter's chemical works.