THEY are two of the most powerful men in the world.

The President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Great Britain met this week in the White house.

But what our own leader David Cameron may not have realised, as he sat in the Oval Office discussing foreign affairs, the economy and an exit strategy for Afghanistan with Barack Obama, is that hanging behind them was a 19th century American landscape by a British artist — from Bolton.

The Three Tetons, by Thomas Moran, the son of two lowly handloom weavers from Lancashire, hangs proudly alongside a portrait of George Washington and above a bust of Abraham Lincoln. It is a landscape painting of the three highest peaks in the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.

Moran, who moved with his family to Philadelphia when he was seven years old, became a renowned artist in the US, where his paintings are worth millions. Former head of Bolton Museum, Steve Garland, helped bring a famous £1.5 million Moran painting to the town 12 years ago.

His work “Nearing Camp, Evening on the Upper Colorado River” was bought in 1998 after a huge fund-raising campaign backed by the Bolton Evening News.

Grants, fund-raising and other financial appeals helped to generate £1.5 million to buy the painting and prevent it from going to an open auction in New York.

Mr Garland said the museum had used the fact that one of the Bolton-born artist’s paintings hangs in the White House to help raise funds.

He said: “In the States, Moran is far more famous than he is in Britain — he’s a household name.

“His paintings command phenomenal amounts of money.

“The Three Tetons will be worth millions.

“It was people like him who brought back these images that convinced politicians that they should create national parks.

“He wasn’t just an artist, he was part of the early environmental and conservation movement.

“He left Bolton when he was quite young but he did come back and visit on at least one occasion. Certainly, the fact that one of his paintings hangs in the White House was used to show how prestigious he is, when we were raising funds.”

The museum owns several Morans but was also duped into purchasing at least two fakes.

His work was infamously reproduced by Bolton master forger Shaun Greenhalgh, of Bromley Cross. Greenhalgh achieved global infamy when one of his most intricate pieces — the Amarna Princess, bought by Bolton Council for £440,000 — was revealed as a fake.

Police investigations revealed he and his parents had cheated numerous art institutions over the course of 17 years, faking work by LS Lowry, artist and sculptor Paul Gauguin as well as Moran.

The Road to America

Thomas Moran was born in 1837 in Bolton, Lancashire, to two handloom weavers

The rapid industrialization of nineteenth century England soon mechanized the weaving process and forced HIS parents out of their jobs

The whole family moved to Kensington, Philadelphia, and at the age of sixteen, Thomas Moran became an apprentice at a wood engraving firm - it was here that he began to paint and draw

In the early 1860, Thomas Moran traveled to Lake Superior, where he painted and sketched the landscape of the Great Lakes

In 1871 worked on Ferdinand V Hayden's Geological Survey Expedition to what is now Yellowstone National Park

Moran was hired, along with photographer William Henry Jackson, to document the landscape of the region

Their combined talents in documenting the geysers, hot springs, canyons and cliffs of the Yellow Stone Territory were be instrumental in persuading Congress to set the land aside as a National Park

His two most famous works The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and The Chasm of the Colorado were purchased for a previously unheard-of sum of $10,000 each by Congress to be displayed in the Capitol in Washington

steven.thompson @theboltonnews.co.uk