Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum has announced that it had succeeded in an eight-month campaign to save Edouard Manet’s ‘Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus’ for the nation.
The painting from the late 1860s had
remained in the UK after it was bought by the artist John Singer
Sargent and it descended in the family of his sister.
In 2011 it was purchased privately by an
overseas buyer for £28.35m, but after being placed under a
temporary export ban it was made available to a British public
institution for a figure well below its market value and it was
finally purchased by the Ashmolean for £7.83m through London fine
art agents Robert Holden Ltd.
The museum received major grants from the
Heritage Lottery Fund (£5.9m) and the Art Fund
(£850,000) as well numerous donations from members of
the public.
The work itself is a study for one of
the key images of the Impressionist movement - Manet's The
Balcony, which hangs in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
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