MP Appeals to Save Twickenham Turner

3.15.17pm BST (GMT +0100) Mon 30th Jun 2008

Vincent Cable, MP, has made a last minute appeal to save for the nation Turner's masterpiece 'Pope's Villa at Twickenham'.

The painting is shortly to be auctioned (July 9th) from a UK collection and will almost certainly be sold to a foreign private collector. He approached the Art Fund to help counter bidding for a painting with a reserve price of £5 to £7 million but potentially worth much more. He said: "this painting of Twickenham, by the man who is probably Britain's greatest artist, is a unique piece of our history. Yet it could possibly leave the country simply because our museums and galleries cannot afford to bid for major works of this kind, particularly with the current explosion in the price of art".

Vincent Cable has put forward two proposals to save paintings like Pope's Villa. The first is to repeat the successful 'buy a brush stroke' campaign which save Turner's 'The Blue Rigi' and which was strongly supported by leading British artists David Hockney, Bridget Rile and Anthony Gormley among others. The second is to allow works of art to be given to the nation in lieu of future inheritance tax - as in the US, Canada and Australia. "The country's artistic heritage is slipping through our fingers", said Vincent Cable.