Greater Manchester Volume I contains over 3,000 oil paintings from 26 public collections in Central Manchester. The largest collection is that of Manchester City Galleries, with over 2,000 oil paintings, best known for its important, representative collection of work by nineteenth-century British artists, particularly the Pre-Raphaelites. Greater Manchester Volume II contains some 2,500 oil paintings from nine public collections in Bolton, Bury, Salford, Sale and Wigan. Salford Museum & Art Gallery holds one of the largest collections of art work in the Manchester area. The collection is dominated by British Victorian paintings, many of which have been donated to the gallery by local philanthropists such as Oliver Heywood and Edward Langworthy. The volume also contains the The L. S. Lowry Collection dedicated solely to the artist. Greater Manchester Volume III contains more than 1,700 paintings located in a wide range of collections, from town halls and libraries to a Tudor manor house. Most of the paintings in the area are housed in galleries in Oldham, Rochdale, Tameside and Stockport, with the majority in store. These collections include a gallery devoted to local artist Harry Rutherford, a wonderfully quirky set of paintings by Tim Bobbin, known as the Lancashire Hogarth, and a fourteenth-century triptych. As well as local artists, the collections include works by William Etty, L. S. Lowry, Lucian Freud, Walter Sickert, Godfrey Kneller, Helen Bradley and Edward Burne-Jones.--http://www.thepcf.org.uk.