The Art Fund is calling for a reform of the UK’s art export control arrangements following the recent collapse of a plan to save a Rembrandt work for the nation.
The plan to buy the Dutch artist’s Portrait of Catrina Hooghsaet (1657) ended on 23 October 2015 after an application to sell the £35m work overseas was withdrawn, meaning the painting could be sold privately.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) put an export bar on the work on 16 October 2015.
The Art Fund had been planning a fundraising campaign to acquire the work, regarded as one of Wales’s greatest art treasures, and donate it to Amgueddfa Cymru (National Museum Wales).
Until recently, the painting has been housed at Penrhyn Castle, Wales. Art Fund director Stephen Deuchar said in an article in Art Quarterly: “The UK’s export review system – both looser in the controls it exercises and more cumbersome in the machinery it employs than systems employed elsewhere in Europe and beyond – has been unable to guarantee its central task [to stop national treasures leaving the UK] for some time.
"Its rules and procedures have been developed over the years under the close scrutiny and lobbying of the British art trade, which has always wished to ensure as much freedom as possible to sell works of art abroad.
“The Art Fund has been lobbying for many years for radical improvements to the UK’s art export control mechanisms,” Deuchar continued.
“As a consequence of their weakness, the permanent loss to Wales and the UK of the Penrhyn Rembrandt may now look almost inevitable, but we appeal to the Treasury, DCMS and Arts Council England (ACE), and all those who support and run the present and outdated systems, to respond to this terrible lesson by committing to real action and reform, without further obfuscation or delay.”
The Art Fund was set to launch its fundraising campaign on 23 October, when it was told that Sotheby’s and the Penrhyn trustees had opted to pull out of the export review process and to proceed with the sale to a private collector.
A statement from Sotheby’s said: “The prospective buyer is now exploring a loan to a UK institution, so that the painting can be further enjoyed by the British public. This will mean, of course, that the picture will remain – for some time to come – in the UK, on view to the public, and that no funds will need to be raised in order to make that happen.”
But Deuchar said: “They had, it seems, accepted the consequent constraint that the new owner would need to keep the work in the UK for the foreseeable future, but presumably calculated that a new export application would almost inevitably succeed in the longer term.”
The decision to place an export bar on the work was made by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (RCEWA), which is administered by ACE.
RCEWA member Aidan Weston-Lewis says: “Its departure abroad would be particularly unfortunate in view of its long presence in the UK, notably in Wales, which has no publicly owned painting by Rembrandt.”
Other important items that have been subject to recent export bars include the Egyptian statue of Sekhemka, which was sold last year for £15.8m, with the proceeds split 45/55 between Northampton Borough Council and Lord Northampton, who claimed ownership of the statue.
The sale was deemed to be against the Museums Association’s (MA) Code of Ethics and led to the council’s museum being barred from the MA and losing its Accreditation with the arts council.
The plan to buy the Dutch artist’s Portrait of Catrina Hooghsaet (1657) ended on 23 October 2015 after an application to sell the £35m work overseas was withdrawn, meaning the painting could be sold privately.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) put an export bar on the work on 16 October 2015.
The Art Fund had been planning a fundraising campaign to acquire the work, regarded as one of Wales’s greatest art treasures, and donate it to Amgueddfa Cymru (National Museum Wales).
Until recently, the painting has been housed at Penrhyn Castle, Wales. Art Fund director Stephen Deuchar said in an article in Art Quarterly: “The UK’s export review system – both looser in the controls it exercises and more cumbersome in the machinery it employs than systems employed elsewhere in Europe and beyond – has been unable to guarantee its central task [to stop national treasures leaving the UK] for some time.
"Its rules and procedures have been developed over the years under the close scrutiny and lobbying of the British art trade, which has always wished to ensure as much freedom as possible to sell works of art abroad.
“The Art Fund has been lobbying for many years for radical improvements to the UK’s art export control mechanisms,” Deuchar continued.
“As a consequence of their weakness, the permanent loss to Wales and the UK of the Penrhyn Rembrandt may now look almost inevitable, but we appeal to the Treasury, DCMS and Arts Council England (ACE), and all those who support and run the present and outdated systems, to respond to this terrible lesson by committing to real action and reform, without further obfuscation or delay.”
The Art Fund was set to launch its fundraising campaign on 23 October, when it was told that Sotheby’s and the Penrhyn trustees had opted to pull out of the export review process and to proceed with the sale to a private collector.
A statement from Sotheby’s said: “The prospective buyer is now exploring a loan to a UK institution, so that the painting can be further enjoyed by the British public. This will mean, of course, that the picture will remain – for some time to come – in the UK, on view to the public, and that no funds will need to be raised in order to make that happen.”
But Deuchar said: “They had, it seems, accepted the consequent constraint that the new owner would need to keep the work in the UK for the foreseeable future, but presumably calculated that a new export application would almost inevitably succeed in the longer term.”
The decision to place an export bar on the work was made by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (RCEWA), which is administered by ACE.
RCEWA member Aidan Weston-Lewis says: “Its departure abroad would be particularly unfortunate in view of its long presence in the UK, notably in Wales, which has no publicly owned painting by Rembrandt.”
Other important items that have been subject to recent export bars include the Egyptian statue of Sekhemka, which was sold last year for £15.8m, with the proceeds split 45/55 between Northampton Borough Council and Lord Northampton, who claimed ownership of the statue.
The sale was deemed to be against the Museums Association’s (MA) Code of Ethics and led to the council’s museum being barred from the MA and losing its Accreditation with the arts council.
