A race started Friday to keep a famous painting by celebrated British artist Joseph Mallord William Turner, also known as J.M.W. Turner, in Britain after it was sold to an overseas buyer for 4.46 million U.S. dollars.
Arts Minister Michael Ellis has slapped an export ban on the work, "Walton Bridges," painted by J.M.W. Turner around 1806.
According to the Daily Mail, all the applications for exporting the piece have been objected until February 28 next year. If a buyer is found for paying a recommended price of 3,484,000 pounds (4.4 million U.S. dollars), the time for the export ban may even be extended to June 30.
The painting "Christ Church College, Oxford" by J.M.W. Turner. /VCG Photo
Art experts believe be work is the first Turner landscape to have been completed in the open air.
The painting, which was sold at auction in July this year for almost 3.5 million pounds, shows the double-span bridge that ran across the River Thames between the locks at Sunbury and Shepperton in Surrey. It had been erected in 1788 to replace a wooden structure, depicted by Canaletto, which had fallen into decay.
The piece led to a major series of Thames river scenes during a prolific period where Turner worked in sketchbooks and painted in watercolor and oil, collecting material for exhibited pictures.
The painting "Chester Castle" by J.M.W. Turner. /VCG Photo
It is believed Turner exhibited the painting at his own gallery in London's Harley Street in 1806, which he used for personal and specifically English subjects rather than his larger, grand manner pictures which he showed at the Royal Academy of Arts.
Ellis said, "Turner is one of Britain's greatest ever artists, whose studies of British life still resonate with the public today. 'Walton Bridges' is a wonderful example of his distinctive style and his fascination with the landscapes of 19th Century Britain."
"It has so much significance for artistic and historical reasons that it is right that we do all we can to save this masterpiece for the benefit of the nation."
Gallery assistants look at a selection of works by British artist J.M.W. Turner at Tate Britain in London, August 3, 2016. /VCG Photo
Lowell Lisbon, who serves on a review committee, said, "This beautiful evocation of the unusual and picturesque double bridge crossing the Thames by the market town of Walton was made at a time when Turner was mostly living at nearby Isleworth rather than in London."
"At that time, around 1806, Turner was frequently sketching in oil, watercolor or pencil from a boat which he rowed along this stretch of the Thames."
"This calm elegiac painting of gentle water-bound commerce and agricultural activity would have contrasted greatly with the turmoil in Continental Europe during this phase of the Napoleonic Wars. It is the absolute antithesis of his Battle of Trafalgar," he added, according to the Daily Mail.
(Top Photo: A Sotheby's employee views "Walton Bridges" by J.M.W. Turner at Sotheby's in London, June 29, 2018. /VCG Photo)