Dr Christopher Brown and European art curator Colin Harrison with the painting
OXFORD’S Ashmolean Museum is mounting a campaign to save an Impressionist masterpiece.
An export ban on the painting has been extended until August by Culture Minister and Wantage MP Ed Vaizey to give the Ashmolean time to raise money to buy Edouard Manet’s Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus, left, painted in 1868.
The painting has already been sold to a foreign buyer for £28.35m, but under tax rules the Ashmolean would be able to buy it for £7.83m.
Museum director Dr Christopher Brown said: “This is one of the most important pictures of the 19th century. It would be an enormous disappointment if it could not be saved for the nation.”
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