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John Singer Sargent's Manet Acquired By Ashmolean Museum

8 August 2012
  • Manet's "Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus," detail.

    Manet's "Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus," detail.

In just eight months, £7.83 million ($12.5 million) was raised to help keep an Impressionist masterpiece by Edouard Manet in Great Britain and on public display.

Thousands of donations from the public along with lottery grants secured the painting for the Ashmolean museum in Oxford.

In February, Ashmolean director Christopher Brown spotted the portrait of Mademoiselle Claus, from 1868, in a London art gallery.

It had been sold to an overseas private buyer for £28.5 million, but the government enforced an export bar to allow the British institution to come up with funds at just 27% of the work's market value.

Artist John Singer Sargent discovered the picture in 1884 at the studio sale of Manet's work following his death. The painting descended in Sargent's family until now.

Rarely seen in public before, the Manet will go on an international tour next year, according to the museum.

The portrait depicts Fanny Claus, a concert violinist and friend of Manet's wife, and it was a preparatory study for "Le Balcon," in the collection of Musee d'Orsay in Paris.

"This is one of the most important pictures of the 19th century which has been in Britain since its sale following the artist’s death in 1884," said Brown. "Its acquisition has transformed the Ashmolean’s collection and has at a stroke made Oxford into a leading centre for the study of Impressionist painting.”

Read more at Guardian
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