A 100-year-old self-portrait of Darwen artist James Hargreaves Morton will return home this week after a £1,000 restoration.

The pastel painting, which had hung in Darwen Library for 40 years, has been restored as part of a campaign by a friends group to pay tribute to the artist killed in the First World War.

Lancashire County conservation experts in Preston had been working on the portrait since late last summer.

The Friends of Darwen Library, who have paid for the restoration, hoped to have it returned in time for the launch of a book on Morton, who was killed in France in the closing days of the Great War, and they will just make it.

Group chairman John East said: “We decided we would raise money to pay for the restoration of this important artwork in the hope that our initiative would encourage local authorities to stump up for similar work. But it seems a lost hope in the current financial climate.”

The friends have now identified the deteriorating frame of the picture, affectionately known by local historians as ‘the one with the awful wallpaper’, as their next project.

The picture was one of six paintings and pastels bequeathed to be hung ‘in a public place’ in the town after the last of Morton’s sisters died in 1967.

A new boarded display area has been put in position in the library and the adjoining reference library. The book, ‘James Hargreaves Morton: A short, colourful life’, will be launched at a coffee morning at the library on Saturday.

Mounted prints of work by Morton and other local artists will be on sale.