RARE pictures by the Bolton artist who became one of America's best-known painters go on display at Bolton Museum and Art Gallery from Saturday.

Pride of place in the exhibition - one of three starting there until January 15 - goes to the famous oil painting by Thomas Moran "Nearing Camp on the Upper Colorado River" which was saved for the town after a campaign to raise £1.3 million.

The large and impressive gilt-framed picture is displayed in a Moran Room, specially painted Victorian red to show the costly collection to its best effect.

Here, other paintings of his - some donated to the Gallery by the Tillotson family and Lord Leverhulme - hang next to etchings by his wife, Mary Nimmo Moran, whom Thomas taught and who also enjoyed great success.

Thomas Moran became the Grand Old Man of American art, but he was born in Bolton in 1837 of Irish-English extraction and moved with his family to the States when he was seven.

Ironically, he achieved fame after being employed to paint pictures of the American West to show the land to fellow-Americans.

One of the pictures in the new Bolton exhibition was painted during a geological survey of Yellowstone Park, to persuade Congress - successfully - to make it the nation's first National Park.

In 1998, a huge local public campaign, backed by the Bolton Evening News, was launched to keep the Colorado River picture in the artist's home town. Grants and public subscription eventually retained it for Bolton, but it has been lent out to other venues since.

While Bolton has the best collection of Morans in this country, worth millions, they will be on view in the company of several other illustrious names better known to British art-lovers.

Another exhibiton there called "The Drawing Room" features sketches and other work by Turner, Millais, Rosetti, Epstein and Hepworth.

There is a sketch of Worsley by LS Lowry, and a fascinating view of Musgrave's Mill from Vallets Lane by Bolton artist Geoffrey Scowcroft Fletcher.

Visitors will also be encouraged to add their own artistic touch - by copying the town's longest painting, of Bradshawgate, with sketches of their own houses and streets. This will be exhibited in the Gallery later.

There will be books for children, and a complete Victorian drawing room, re-created from the Museum's own stock plus furniture from the Mayor of Bolton's Parlour.

A third exhibition of untitled paintings by Barry White takes place at the same time.

"We hope that visitors will find the three exhibitions interesting," commented Fiona Salvesen, the town's keeper of art.

"Bolton has many art treasures and it's good to see some on display that people may not have seen before. There is always plenty of interest in the Morans."