Detail from Portrait of Catrina Hooghsaet by Rembrandt. Photograph: © Rijksmuseum Museum
Last week Jonathan Jones asked whether it matters if art treasures stay in Britain. Would it be so bad if some of the UK's great paintings went to collections overseas, he asked.
Earlier that same week the issue came into sharp focus when The Art Fund - an independent charity dedicated to securing art for UK public collections - launched a public campaign to save JMW Turner's magnificent watercolour, The Blue Rigi, for the Tate gallery.
The watercolour was sold in the summer to a private collector abroad, but the government stepped in to allow a gallery in this country time to raise the money to buy it. The Art Fund pledged £500,000 and Tate has committed £2m, so the race is now on to raise the rest of the money (£2.45m) before March 20.
But would it really be such a disaster if The Blue Rigi went overseas? Does the Tate need another Turner to add to its bequest? There's no question that the UK already has plenty of works by the artist, but The Blue Rigi represents the very pinnacle of his achievement in watercolour - the medium of which he was perhaps the greatest master. It is a truly extraordinary work, and it's not just us that think so - members of the public have already pledged more than £70,000 to the campaign.
Is it chauvinistic to "save" great works of art from going abroad? Is it preferable for a magnificent work to go to a public collection overseas rather than languishing behind closed doors in the UK?
The questions are hard, but another case in point is the hotly debated 17th-century Rembrandt portrait, privately owned in Wales for 150 years, which the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is hoping to buy. Should we stop the painting from leaving our shores? After all, Rembrandt is one of the greatest Dutch artists.
The interesting point of the story is that the Rijksmuseum may be helped by a special grant from the Dutch government. That is just what Jones suggests our own National Gallery ought to get - "money to shop around aggressively and hungrily, for art all over the world".
Jones is pessimistic about the likelihood of our government taking such an initiative. Yet, although more generous public funding does not look likely, there are other ways in which the government can help museums enrich their collections. By introducing appropriate corporate and personal tax incentives, many private collectors might be persuaded to give works of art to public collections. It works in many other countries, so why not try it here?
