UK export bar on Triqueti relief of Florence Campbell

Britain has pressed pause on a Victorian sculpture’s departure. On 14 November 2025 the Department for Culture, Media and Sport placed a temporary export bar on Henri‑Joseph François, Baron de Triqueti’s marble relief of sisters Florence and Alice Campbell, valued at £280,000. The pause gives UK museums time to try to buy the work before it leaves.

Here’s the object we’re talking about. It’s a unique double portrait dated 1857: a 72.5 cm marble medallion set on a rosewood and verde‑antica marble plinth with gilded mouldings that lifts the whole piece to almost two metres. DCMS notes that many of Triqueti’s works are untraced, so this survival is unusually helpful for research.

Triqueti mattered in Victorian Britain. He worked for royalty and helped shape taste through the Albert Memorial Chapel at Windsor, whose interior features the celebrated Triqueti Marbles. The Royal Collection Trust records his incised, coloured marble panels there as a defining achievement that students still study today. RCEWA committee member Stuart Lochhead also points to Triqueti’s high‑society links across France and Britain, from King Louis‑Philippe to Queen Victoria.

The sitters-Florence and Alice Campbell-were daughters of Robert Tertius Campbell, an Australian businessman who experimented with new farming methods at Buscot Park in Oxfordshire. The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest says the relief is valuable not only for art history but for understanding Victorian women’s lives and how country estates were managed.

One sister later became a headline name. Florence Campbell is better known as Florence Bravo. In 1876 her second husband, the barrister Charles Bravo, died from antimony poisoning; the death was never solved and Florence was not charged. The case fascinated readers then and now. Agatha Christie later said the Bravo mystery fed into The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and today’s true‑crime podcasts still revisit it.

So, what is an export bar and how does it work? When an owner applies to take a culturally important object overseas, DCMS can delay the export licence after advice from the RCEWA. The committee tests objects against the Waverley criteria. This relief met numbers two and three: outstanding aesthetic importance, and outstanding significance for study-especially of Triqueti’s techniques, his patrons and Victorian medallion portraits.

The timetable matters. The first deferral runs until 13 February 2026. If a UK museum or public buyer can match the recommended price-£280,000 plus VAT-the owner then has 15 business days to respond. If both sides sign an option agreement, a second three‑month window opens to complete fundraising. Arts Council England notes that since 2021 ‘binding offers’ have made matched purchases more secure.

This isn’t a permanent block; it’s a window for public benefit. The idea is to balance fair market sales with a chance to keep significant objects in reach of UK audiences. For you as a reader-or as a teacher-it’s a practical example of how policy, heritage and money meet, and how expert advice flows into a minister’s final decision.

If you’re teaching this story, connect the threads. Start with the art: Triqueti’s materials and Renaissance‑influenced portrait style. Add the social history: Florence Bravo’s treatment in the press and what it tells us about gender and power in the 1870s. Then trace provenance as a timeline-from the likely 1857 commission, to a Christie’s appearance in 1983, a Sotheby’s sale in 1984, years in the Bernard Kelly Collection, and a Lyon & Turnbull sale on 15 January 2025-so students can see how artworks move.

What happens next is clear. If a UK buyer emerges by February and a deal is signed, fundraising continues for three months; if not, and no agreement is reached, the export licence may be granted and the relief can leave. For more, the DCMS announcement and Arts Council England’s RCEWA pages outline the process in plain terms. This small disc of marble carries a big slice of Victorian life-and now we all have a deadline to learn from it.