LONDON, ENGLAND.- The Art Fund has awarded a grant of £400,000 towards the purchase of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ striking Colonel Acland and Lord Sydney: The Archers, (c 1770), giving Tate a flying start in its bid to secure the painting – one of the highlights of Reynolds’ oeuvre – for the nation. The picture was export stopped in January following its sale to a European institution at the end of last year. At the time, it was given a starred rating by the Export Reviewing Committee, indicating that every possible effort should be made to keep it in the country. Tate has also secured a pledge of £500,000 from Tate Members and now has until 26 July to raise the £3,200,000 necessary to match the agreed market price.

The Archers is a double full-length portrait of the dashing Colonel John Dyke Acland (1746-1778, on the right) and Dudley Alexander Sydney Cosby (1732-1774). Acland was an MP, and raised his own militia at the suggestion of George III, joining General Burgoyne on his expedition to America in 1775. (His wife was a heroine of the American Wars of Independence.) Cosby (later Baron Sydney) became Lord Halifax’s private secretary in 1762; he was also a diplomat and reportedly committed suicide by ‘a dose of Danish poison’ in 1774. The two men are depicted as ‘men of action’, in the act of releasing arrows from their bows, in a flamboyant composition which links the picture with the great mythological hunting scenes of Titian and Claude Lorraine. Bravura touches are everywhere, from the ‘Flemish’ still-life of dead game at their feet, to the thick impasto of the freely-painted wooded landscape. The old master allusions contain rich references to the themes of youth and friendship.

A technically brilliant tour de force, The Archers is intellectually ambitious and encapsulates key aspects of 18th-century aesthetic theory. It was begun in the summer of 1769, the year the Royal Academy was founded and Reynolds was elected its first President. In his Discourses on Art - 15 lectures delivered to students at the Royal Academy between 1769 and 1790 - Reynolds argued that painters should not slavishly copy nature but seek a generalised and ideal form that would give portraiture a new grandeur, dignity and importance in the hierarchy of art. In practice, this meant depicting the human figure in a style which made artistic and intellectual reference to classical art and the Italian Renaissance masters such as Titian and Raphael. This grand manner had previously been confined to history painting – the highest branch of art – but Reynolds adapted it very successfully, inventing the academic High Art portrait.

This, then, is no run of the mill portrait commission; it seems to have been done for Reynolds’ own purposes, to display the scale of his ambitions for the genre. After Acland’s death, it was purchased by his widow and passed by descent/sale to members of the Acland family until it was sold to the present vendor in 2000.

The Archers is one of the centrepieces of the exhibition Joshua Reynolds: The Creation of Celebrity (26 May – 18 September 2005) at Tate Britain – where it is exhibited together with Reynolds’ famous full-length Portrait of Omai (which Tate still wishes to acquire). The work is in exceptionally good condition, having been recently expertly restored. If fundraising efforts are successful, Tate plans to tour it to Glasgow, Manchester and Bristol. Additional funding is now being sought from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

David Barrie, Director of the National Art Collections Fund, said: ‘This is a major grant for the Art Fund – it comes as we launch our annual Review for 2004, a year in which we offered £4.3 million to museums and galleries nationwide and kick-started several successful fundraising campaigns. We hope that this grant will speed Tate towards its target by the July deadline, and that as a result this tremendously impressive and unusual work by Reynolds will be brought into the public domain.’

Sir Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate said: 'The Archers is precisely the kind of outstanding British work which is the target of Tate’s recently launched campaign: Building The Tate Collection. Today’s announcement of the Art Fund’s major grant towards our fundraising goal will enormously help our efforts to secure the painting for the national collection. Throughout its history, the strength of Tate’s Collection has in a large part depended on the generosity and vision of individuals and national bodies such as the Art Fund and we are enormously grateful for their support for this important work.’

Two comparable Art Fund grants were offered in 2004 to UK collections to launch major fundraising efforts; £400,000 was given to the National Gallery as it commenced a marathon effort to save Raphael’s Madonna of the Pinks, and £500,000 was given to the Fitzwilliam Museum at the start of a major appeal which eventually led to the successful acquisition of the Macclesfield Psalter for the nation.

In October 2004, Tate launched Building the Tate Collection, a new initiative to sustain and develop the collection held by Tate on behalf of the nation. The campaign was launched with a pledge of significant works by leading artists including Lucian Freud, David Hockey and Damien Hirst, and will be shared with Tate’s regional partners to enable audiences across the country to have greater access to contemporary art. In addition to gifts from artists, the initiative is focussing on gifts of works of art from collectors to strengthen significant and under-represented areas of the collection. A permanent fund has also been created, through gifts and legacies, with the resulting income used to promote acquisitions, research and conservation.