The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles knows when it comes to getting an export license from the British government, sometimes you win; other times you don’t.
In May it announced that it had bought “Rembrandt Laughing,’’ a 1628 self-portrait by the Dutch master from the London dealers Hazlitt Gooden & Fox. On Tuesday, BBC News reported that Ed Vaizey, Britain’s culture minister, had deferred approval of the Getty’s application for an export license until Oct. 15.
The painting, executed on copper, had been for sale at an obscure auction house in England six years ago where it was attributed to a “follower of Rembrandt.’’ At the time, several dealers suspected that it was in fact by the Dutch master. Scientific testing and study by Ernst van der Wetering, a leading Rembrandt expert, confirmed the attribution. Now, in order to keep it from leaving Britain, an institution there has to raise £16.5 million (about $25.1 million), the price the Getty has agreed to pay for the painting.
The Getty has had a rocky history trying to export artworks out of England. In 1997 it was able to get a Poussin landscape from Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire. But it waited five years before learning, in 1994, that it could not have Canova’s “Three Graces,’’ for which it was willing to pay $12 million, because the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the National Galleries of Scotland had raised enough money to match the price.
