Race to Keep Howard Hodgkin's $2.3m India Painting in the UK

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has placed a temporary export bar on Howard Hodgkin's oil painting, 'Mrs Acton in Delhi' (1967-71). This decision provides a UK gallery or institution with a chance to acquire the work and ensure its retention within the national collection.

Hodgkin painted 'Mrs Acton in Delhi' between 1967 and 1971 after one of his many visits to India and at a turning point in his career as an abstract artist.

The work was formerly in the J. Walter Thompson Collection and in 2017, the year of the artist's death, it was part of the exhibition Howard Hodgkin: Painting India at Hepworth Wakefield in the north of England.