A 200-year-old portrait of a pioneering industrialist is set to find a home in the Forest after a £5,000 appeal to buy and restore it passed its target in a month.

The oil painting of groundbreaking Scottish-born metallurgist David Mushet hung for most of its life in the boardroom of a Sheffield steel firm.

It was thought to have been lost when the factory’s contents were sold in the 1980s, leaving only a black and white reproduction in a book.

Then, recently, it appeared on an online auction site and two local historians launched an appeal to bring it to the Forest of Dean where Mushet made his name.

Mushet contributed to the invention of tungsten steel, perfecting the Bessemer process and developing steel rails for railways with his son, Robert, who was born in Coleford in 1811.

Ian Standing and Roger Deeks led the quest to raise the £5,000 to bring it to the Dean Heritage Centre in Soudley where, after restoration, it will form the centrepiece of a display on his life and influence.

Ian said: “We had overwhelming interest and I would like to thank all the donors that contacted Roger and myself and who donated through the website.

“Those that wish to come will be invited to a special preview of the painting before

it is exhibited.

“David and Robert Mushet were extraordinary figures and an important part of the Forest of Dean’s heritage.”

The Dean Heritage Centre has several Mushet artefacts for the display including the grave headstone of David and his wife Agnes who are buried in Staunton churchyard.

Born in 1772, Mushet moved to the Forest to manage the ironworks at Whitecliff on the outskirts of Coleford in 1810 where he rebuilt the furnaces. He later developed the Darkhill ironworks.

He was at the cutting edge of industrial technology and his achievements included inventing a process to make cast steel from wrought iron and developing the use of Black-band ironstone to make iron.

In 1815, in the stone barn next to his Coleford home, he discovered a way to produce refined iron and steel directly from the blast furnace without the use of a separate refinery.

He retired to Monmouth in 1845 and died two years later.