Written by Mike Boehm, LA Times Friday, 04 February 2011 22:20

Turner Masterpiece “Modern Rome – Camp Vaccino” Cleared To Move To Getty Museum

Los Angeles (LA Times). -  Seven months after the gavel came down at Sotheby's in London, declaring the Getty Museum its proud buyer (for $44.9 million) a prized 1839 painting by J.M.W. Turner is indeed finally “sold” and headed to Brentwood, where the museum expects to display it by the end of February. “Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino” is a landscape vision of the unexcavated Roman Forum, still called the Campo Vaccino, the "Cow Pasture", shimmering in hazy light and is the last of Turner's twenty-year series of views of the city. It was painted at the peak of Turner's career from studies and sketches made on two visits to the city. Features of Classical, Renaissance and Baroque Rome occupy the canvas, but the foreground contains indicators of contemporary life, including goatherds. The painting, which had been privately owned, was on long-term loan the National Galleries of Scotland until auctioned at Sotheby’s in July 2010.

Although the Getty Museum were the highest bidder, paying £29.7 million ($44.9 million), breaking the record paid for a Turner and closing the auction in 5 minutes, they were not immediately able to take possession. Under British law, artworks of “special significance” that have been on British soil for more than 50 years can't be sold and exported without a license, and if a buyer in Britain is able to match what the foreign buyer was willing to pay, that institution or individual gets to purchase the work so that it remains in the country. In November 2010, the British culture minister said the license for the Turner would be held up at least through February 2, and possibly until August 1, to allow a domestic purchaser time to come forward.

The National Galleries of Scotland were in no position to raise the money, having raised £50m to buy Titian's “Diana and Actaeon” and committed to raising another £50m to purchase a second Titian “Diana and Callisto ”from the Duke of Sutherland’s collection. It now seems that no other potential UK buyer was prepared to match the price, and the export license was issued by the British Ministry of Culture on Thursday 3 February.

The Getty Museum have fallen at this hurdle before, failing to take home Raphael’s “Madonna of the Pinks” for $46.6 million in 2002, giving way instead to the National Gallery of London, and in 2005 it lost out on a $3.2-million illuminated psalter when the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge stepped in.  Whether because of more straightened times in the UK, or because British museums already have large collections of Turner’s work,  “Modern Rome” is now heading for a new home in the USA. Museum. Speaking to the LA Times, museum Director David Bomford said "We're delighted and looking forward very much to having it here ... I have no doubt we will have some sort of celebration, but we want to get it here first and put it on the wall.