The first deadline has passed for any British institution to put up its hand for the item, a major collection of Australian colonial art, which has been held up for export under Britain's movable heritage laws.
A decision on the fate of the collection of work by explorer artist Thomas Baines (1820-1875) had been deferred for six months but a renewal of the deferral is still possible if a UK institution or individual can show that it is seriously interested in it.
The cache had been provisionally sold through Christie's London by the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) which commissioned, them to an unidentified collector in Australia for £4.6 million, and will go to the Australian buyer if no party in the UK can be found to match this sum.
The Arts Council of Britain's Export Review Unit came out in support of an export ban with a swinging endorsement of the collection's importance to the United Kingdom .
The National Library of Australia in Canberra has the biggest body of related works to the cache, and therefore the keenest interest in the outcome under the dynamic new Library Council chairmanship of Mr Ryan Stokes.
The works were stated to be going into an Australian national collection – but it was not clear whether this was private of public. They were further reported to be going for conservation and protection into a Western Australian collection.
Inevitably, the name Kerry Stokes, father of Ryan, and a West Australian, came to mind, as he is one of the few collectors with the wherewithal and imagination to appreciate the importance of such material.
The National Gallery of Australia , which was to have been the buyer of the Stubbs, has told the Australian Art Sales Digest's Terry Ingram that it was not the buyer of the Baines. But then the sale is not yet complete.
A document has come to light which was sent to Britain 's libraries and art museums just over six months ago which reported the strong support of the UK 's Minister for the Arts, Mr Edmund Vaizey, for the retention of the Baines cache in the United Kingdom .
In placing a temporary block on the permanent export of a collection of the works, he was following a recommendation by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (RCEWA) that the collection is “of outstanding significance for the study of British Colonial history and the exploration of Australia in the mid-19th century.”
Between 1841 and the early 1860s Baines worked as artist to a succession of British expeditions, initially to Australia and later in Africa , where he accompanied Livingstone.
The works were completed during the Gregory expedition to northern Australia in 1855-6. They entered the RGS’s collection on Baines’ return to the United Kingdom in 1857.
The collection will be a great loss to the open market where Baines' work is keenly contested by Australians, Southern Africans and British collectors.
What a sale of the 21 oil paintings on canvas, all measuring 45.1 x 66 cm would have made, particularly, say by Bonhams with its outreach to both the South African and Australian markets is unknown.
But there are also four notebooks containing a letter, a studio photograph of Baines, and 272 drawings and watercolours, mainly of North-Western Australia but also of Port Jackson and of Timor and other Indonesian islands, all taken in the course of Arthur Gregory’s expedition to northern Australia.
To complete the purchase, the ultimate buyer will also secure nine folding panoramas, seven unframed drawings and watercolours of various sizes; and one chart and route traverse in pencil, pen, ink and watercolour showing the tracks of the ships involved in the expedition.
“The works provide an extraordinarily direct, informative and evocative record of the landscape and peoples of Northern Australia and Indonesia during the time of the expedition, and such a unique group of material offers a wonderful opportunity for further research to be undertaken,” Mr Vaizey said in the document recommending them to UK institutions.
“This collection of works that document Gregory’s exploration of Northern Australia is remarkable and to see such a collection all still together is incredibly rare.
“I do hope that this fascinating record of British exploration in the 1800s remains in the UK where it can be studied in more detail, and I encourage any interested parties to contact the Arts Council at the earliest opportunity.”
According to the memo to the UK institutions, an export licence application for the collection of works will be deferred for a period ending on 31 October 2013 inclusive.
This period may be extended until 30 April 2014 inclusive if a serious intention to raise funds to purchase the works is made at the recommended price of £4.2 million.
The fund raising for the Stubbs means there will be less loose change for any UK institution to trawl for, but the NMM would not be in the market for them.
