The Minister’s ruling follows a recommendation by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest, administered by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. The Committee recommended that the export decision be deferred on the grounds that the painting is of outstanding aesthetic importance.

The Lake of Lucerne was painted in about 1815, as the climax of a sequence of nine large-scale evocations of the Alps. The painting skilfully draws on the complicated techniques that had characterised this important and ground-breaking series. Colours are effortlessly blended and scratched on the surface of the paper to suggest the forests rising above the lake. Turner’s evocation of rising mists and clouds gives a credible sense of depth and perspective, while at the same time demonstrating their insubstantiality.  

The Chairman of the Reviewing Committee, Lord Inglewood said:

“J M W Turner is Britain’s most important watercolour artist and Lake of Lucerne, from the Landing Place at Fluelen has long been regarded as one of his very finest achievements in this medium.”

The decision on the export licence application for the painting will be deferred for a period ending on 11 January 2008 inclusive. This period may be extended until 11 May 2008 inclusive if a serious intention to raise funds with a view to making an offer to purchase the painting at the recommended price of £1,960,400 excluding VAT (£2,000,282.50 including VAT) is expressed.

Anyone interested in making an offer to purchase the painting should contact the owner’s agent through:
 
The Secretary
The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest
Museums, Libraries and Archives Council,
Victoria House,
Southampton Row
London WC1B 4EA

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Notes to Editors

1. Media enquiries on the operation of and casework arising from the work of the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (RCEWA) should  be directed to Communications Manager,  John Harrison, on 020 7273 1402, email: john.harrison@mla.gov.uk
2. The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest is an independent body, serviced by MLA, which advises the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport on whether a cultural object, intended for export, is of national importance under specified criteria. Where the Committee finds that an object meets one or more of the criteria, it will normally recommend that the decision on the export licence application should be deferred for a specified period. An offer may then be made from within the United Kingdom at or above the fair market price.
3. Pictures of this item are available. Please email john.harrison@mla.gov.uk  (MLA no longer subscribes to the PixMedia website service).
4. The full title of the painting is Lake of Lucerne, from the Landing Place at Fluelen, looking towards Bauen and Tell’s Chapel, Switzerland. It is watercolour, with some scratching out, on paper and measures 660 x 1000 mm (26 x 39 in). It is signed with initials ‘JMWT’ on the lower right. Where the paper has been overmounted in the past a change in colour suggests that there was some fading, but generally this painting is in excellent condition. It has been preserved in its original 19th century frame.
5. The painting shows the mountains encircling the village of Flüelen, on the southern shore of Lake Lucerne, and looks over the part of the lake known as the Bay of Uri, featuring the distinctive tower of Tell’s Chapel in the right-hand distance. 
6. The Lake of Lucerne appears to have been painted in 1815 and was based on material gathered during Turner’s first European tour of 1802, when the Peace of Amiens temporarily permitted travel on the Continent. Though forced by the resumption of war to confine his travels thereafter to Britain, between 1803 and 1815 Turner completed many realisations of the sublime scenery he had encountered in France and Switzerland.  But the most influential and widely praised were his powerful large watercolours, which seemed to rival the force and naturalism of what it was possible to achieve in oil paint, at the same time offering subtler effects and colouring.  Each design was painted on a sheet of paper of the very largest format available to Turner, in effect equalling the size of oil paintings, and thereby contributing to Turner’s attack on preconceived ideas of the limitations of his favoured medium. 
7. The Lake of Lucerne was one of four watercolours shown at the Royal Academy, London, in 1815, the others being:  The Passage of Mount St Gotthard from the Devil’s Bridge, c.1804 (Abbot Hall Gallery, Kendal); The Great Fall of the Reichenbach, c.1804 (Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford); and The Battle of Fort Rock, Val d’Aouste, Piedmont 1796 (Turner Bequest, Tate). 
8. The perception that Britain had, at last, established its own original art form – the water-colour painting - was initially a jingoistic claim that gathered momentum during the first decade of the new century, but which seemed to be set in stone when Walter Fawkes displayed his large collection of watercolours by Turner and other artists at his London home at Grosvenor Place in 1819 (and again in 1820).  The exhibition was extensively and favourably reviewed in the burgeoning art press, attracting foreign, as well as British visitors.   Fawkes of Farnley Hall, Yorkshire, was Turner’s most important collector.

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