IT was a case of out with the old and in with the new at Bolton Museum and Art Gallery.

While museum staff welcomed its latest addition -- a Thomas Moran watercolour worth £90,000 -- it waved a temporary goodbye yesterday to its most famous piece.

The Moran picture, Nearing Camp, is de-camping to The Tate Britain for a high profile national exhibition called American Sublime.

However, the new arrival by the Bolton-born artist, who made his name for his landscape paintings in America, does more than compensate for Nearing Camp's temporary disappearance.

As the crate holding the painting worth almost £1.5 million was being loaded, Jennifer Shaw, keeper of art at the museum, was admiring the museum's latest acquisition.

The River Schuylkill is an early painting by Moran. He painted it in 1862 before his visit to Britain later that same year.

Jennifer said: "This is a real gem for our museum. It was very exciting when it arrived -- like having a piece of history land on your doorstep.

"We now have the responsibility to find out as much as possible about the picture. It focuses on a scene from his home town near Philadelphia, and he painted it before coming to Britain to study Turner's work at the National Gallery.

"It was given as a gift to the then director of the National Gallery, Ralph Nicholson Wornum, as a thank you for allowing him to study there. It remained in the Wornum family for a number of years, until recently.

"This is number 10 in our collection of Moran paintings, and I am particularly pleased with this because it is an early work and gives us a little more variation, a chance to see how he progressed.

"It is a beautiful picture but it is not until you see it properly that you realise just how much delicate detail has gone into it. The reproductions you see do not do it justice."

The public gets the chance to see the museum's new acquisition in March when it features as part of a Surprises in Store exhibition.

The Nearing Camp painting is due to return to the gallery at the end of May. It is set to be featured in a five-part series on the best British paintings in the Daily Telegraph.

Jennifer added: "The acquisition of these works gives us a far higher profile across the country." NEW ARRIVAL: Jennifer Shaw hangs Thomas Moran's The River Schuylkill in Bolton Art Gallery LOADED UP: Nearing Camp on its way to the Tate Britain exhibition