British museums are fighting tooth and nail to secure important acquisitions for their collections. Last week, Oxford's Ashmolean Museum announced it had raised enough funds to purchase Edouard Manet's "Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus" at the reduced price of £7.83m, thanks to the government's waiving of £20-odd million in taxes. Now Oxford's Fitzwilliam Museum has pledged to acquire Nicolas Poussin's "Extreme Unction" (c.1638-40) and today launched a public appeal backed by the charity Art Fund.

The painting belongs to the "Seven Sacraments" series painted by the French artist in Rome for patron Cassiano dal Pozzo. It pictures, in Poussin's perfect classicist style, a dying man being anointed according to Christian rituals. "Extreme Unction" was acquired together with the rest of the series by the Duke of Rutland in 1785. The paintings were highly popular when presented at the Royal Academy, where they were seen by King George III.

"Extreme Unction," the last picture of the series still in Britain, has an estimated worth of £14m, but it has been made available to the Fitzwilliam for just under £3.9m on the express condition that it would enter the museum collection.

The deal came as the result of a sale by the 11^th Duke of Rutland's 2000 Settlement of another work from the series, "Ordination," to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, for £15m. "Extreme Unction" was offered by the Trustees through H.M. Government's Acceptance-in-Lieu scheme to pay for the inheritance tax the first sale had incurred.

For the Fitzwilliam Museum's management, this is a not-to-be-missed opportunity. "This would be the most significant old master painting acquired by the Museum in nearly a century and would transform our representation of French art and of the classical tradition through a masterpiece by the greatest French painter of the seventeenth-century," said director Dr. Timothy Potts.

10% of the sum necessary for the acquisition has already been pledged, and the Fitzwilliam is now applying to the Heritage Lottery Fund and approaching various charitable institutions. Individuals can give online via the Art Fund website. 

It's difficult to argue against such a campaign. In an ideal world, provincial museums should be able to acquire masterpieces. But as with the Manet at the Ashmolean, can Britain really afford it in the midst of a double-dip recession? Shouldn't the government reduce these types of "in-lieu" schemes and inflict less severe cuts on art organizations throughout the country — particularly since the National Gallery alone already owns 13 Poussin paintings?

Potts, for his part, see the acquisition of the painting as a catalyst for great educational opportunities. "It is a 'destination painting' that will both benefit from the context of our great European collections and add greatly to the experience and programmes that we can offer the public," he said.

"It will be a uniquely rich resource for teaching at all levels, drawing as it does in style and subject matter from ancient Roman art, the rituals of the early Christian Church, and Poussin’s own artistic grounding in France and Rome. A national and international treasure, it would be very much at home at the Fitzwilliam."