LEWISTON — A public reception will be held Sunday afternoon at Lewiston Public Library for artist and Lewiston native William Manning, who has donated an abstract landscape to the library.

The reception is from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Dec. 6 to meet and honor Manning and to unveil the donated artwork. The event will be held in the library’s Callahan Hall and feature remarks by Bates College Museum of Art Curator Bill Low and local attorney and art critic Philip Isaacson. Manning will also speak.

Manning, who resides in Falmouth, created a body of work over five decades that, according to LPL Director Rick Speer, “has been hailed as completely original and evocative of his Maine roots.” Speer said his works are in many collections, including Bates and Colby colleges, the Farnsworth Museum and the Portland Museum of Art.

Information prepared by the library for the reception states that before Manning left Lewiston in 1954 at the age of 18, he was a frequent visitor to the Lewiston Public Library. Decades later, when he drove from Portland to Lewiston every two weeks to pick up books for his elderly mother, he would stop by the library. “Each time, I made a point of looking at the painting by Marsden Hartley that the library owned,” he said. “I always thought that if I became a painter of some worth that I would like to emulate Marsden Hartley’s generous donation of a painting.”

The reception is free and open to the public. The library is at 200 Lisbon St. at the corner of Pine Street in downtown Lewiston. For more information call 513-3119.