£100m bid to keep Titian masterpieces in the UK

A £100m appeal to keep two of the most important paintings on British shores has been launched today.

The works, by Renaissance artist Titian, are worth £150 million each but have been offered to the National Gallery and the National Galleries of Scotland for a third of the price.

Now the Government is likely to be asked to help towards the campaign, which has until New Year's Eve to come up with the money or risk losing the paintings abroad.

The two works - Diana And Actaeon and Diana And Callisto - are being sold by the 7th Duke of Sutherland.

The Duke is looking to raise £100 million, and could sell any of four Titians, three Raphaels, a Rembrandt and eight Poussins, which form part of the Bridgewater Collection in the Edinburgh gallery - one of the most important private collections of Old Masters on loan to an institution in the UK.

Both national galleries are attempting to secure government funding and cash from public arts bodies to buy the Titians, which will go on rotating display in London and Edinburgh.

The Department for Culture Media and Sport today confirmed that the Government was looking at providing some of the cash needed to keep the paintings for the nation.

But the DCMS distanced itself from claims that it was looking for an emergency Treasury grant of up to £20 million and said the National Heritage Memorial Fund and private sources were being actively considered, saying only that "discussions were taking place".

A spokesman for the Duke said: "He has offered these two works to the National Galleries on favourable terms. There is no intention of selling these paintings in particular. If this still does not go through there is a possibility that these paintings or others within the collection of equivalent value could then be sold on the open market."

The paintings in the Bridgewater Collection-were among the first privately owned Old Master paintings to be made accessible to the public in Britain.

Visitors were able to see them in a London townhouse on certain days from as early as 1806 and they have been available to the public almost continually ever since. The collection was formed by Francis Egerton, the third and last Duke of Bridgewater, known as the Canal Duke. Most of the paintings were acquired following the dispersal of the Orleans Collection after the French Revolution in 1792.

The collection passed by descent to the late 6th Duke of Sutherland, who in 1945 placed the most famous works from the collection on loan to the National Galleries of Scotland. The Titians, purchased by the Duke of Bridgewater in 1798, were painted as part of a cycle of works for Philip II of Spain. National Gallery director Nicholas Penny said: "For a century, the agitation to preserve great works of art in British collections from export has been animated by anxiety that Titian's great paintings Diana And Actaeon and Diana And Callisto might be sold.

"Now the paintings have been offered on remarkably advantageous terms."