Museum curators have acquired valuable paintings left in a bequest.

Emma Ball, assistant curator at Worthing Museum, was invited to visit the National Art Collections Fund at Millais House in London earlier this year.

The organisation had received a bequest of 60 oil paintings and watercolours from the late Diana King, who wished for her estate to be distributed among public collections.

Her collection included paintings by a wide range of significant 20th Century artists, including Ivon Hitchens, Ruskin Spear and Barbara Rae.

Museums from around the UK were invited to make a selection, stating their choices in order of preference.

Worthing acquired two oil paintings by Spear, which had been the town's third and fourth choices. The artist taught at the Central School of Arts and Crafts and the Royal College of Art after the Second World War.

The museum also received two portraits donated by the former secretary of Worthing doctor William Pitt, who died in December 2002.

One shows Dr Pitt senior (1881-1971), father of William and the town's police surgeon for many years. The other shows William himself, born in 1917.

The artist was probably John Berwick.

Dr Pitt junior had his general practice in Teville Road from the Sixties onwards before retiring from NHS duties in 1991, although he continued to treat patients privately until shortly before his death.

It is believed the Pitts were related to William Pitt the younger, prime minister in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries.

The museum also recently bought an oil painting showing the Dome and seafront, by Peter Cumming, circa 1950.