The perfect piece to begin The Herbert's story-telling canvas of Art Since 1900 has arrived.

Staff at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum have welcomed the exciting arrival of a 100-year-old Roger Fry painting, which was bought from an art gallery in Scotland for £1800 using a fund built up through years of public donations to the museum.

Italian Hill Town will take pride of place as the first piece that visitors will see in the new Art Since 1900 gallery, which is part of the £20 million refurbishment and extension of the venue in Jordan Well in Coventry city centre.

Fry, who was born in London in 1866, was a well-known art critic and often referred to as the apostle of modernism because of his influence on the changing of the art world, and the way artists painted in the 20th century.

At the time when Fry painted Italian Hill Town in 1908, he was working at The Metropolitan Museum in New York, collecting paintings and art donations for the museum.

Ron Clarke, keeper of visual arts at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, said: "This is a conventional picture but Fry was not a conventional artist.

"He spent a long time explaining how important composition and structure are in a painting, and viewed paintings as a picture in their own right and not a picture of something.

"Italian Hill Town will be on display at the very beginning of the Art Since 1900 gallery, because it represents the beginning of the era and shows the way to how paintings from the 20th century were done."

The Fry painting is one of the many works on display in the new gallery, including a famous L S Lowry piece, which is one of the very few larger paintings by the English artist.

For more information about The Herbert visit www.theherbert.org or telephone 024 7683 2386.