Russia cancels London show

London: The chill in Russia's relations with Britain reached the galleries of the Royal Academy of Arts yesterday when Moscow cancelled a major exhibition of Russian paintings in London.

The display of more than 120 works had been scheduled to open on January 26 and run until April. The collection, drawn from three museums in Moscow and one in St Petersburg, would have included works by Russian impressionists and post-impressionists including Kandinsky, Tatlin and Malevich.

But Irinia Antonova, the director of the Pushkin Museum, in Moscow, said that everything had been called off. "The British side did not guarantee the return of the exhibition," she told the Interfax news agency.

"As negotiations on such guarantees have ended unsuccessfully, the decision on returning all the exhibits to Russia has been made."

The paintings are now in Dusseldorf and will be returned to Russia.

The Royal Academy, which had hailed the exhibition as a "testimony to the glorious history" of Russian art, said that nothing official had been heard from the authorities in Moscow.

Widely promoted

The academy declined to say how many advance tickets, priced at £11 (Dh81), had been sold for the event, which had been widely promoted.

The first link between the now aborted exhibition and the frosty state of Anglo-Russian relations came from David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary. Writing in his blog on Saturday, Miliband mentioned the event along with Russia's announcement earlier this month that all British Council offices outside Moscow must close.

Restrictive

The Foreign Secretary said: "Many people are looking forward to the Russian Masterpieces exhibition coming to London next year. Rightly. But what on earth can the Russians think will be achieved by forcing the closure of British Council offices outside Moscow? It is illegal [against the 1963 Vienna agreement], hurts Russians, and damages Russia's image abroad.

"There is even a debate about whether the Russian measures are MORE restrictive than those against the British Council in Burma and Iran. I hope the government will think again."

The Foreign Office denied that Miliband's words amounted to an implicit threat to cancel the exhibition in retaliation for the treatment of the British Council - a move which, in the event, Russia pre-empted.

A spokesman said the Foreign Secretary's only intention had been to "contrast" Britain's "support" for the display of Russian art with Moscow's insistence on restricting the British Council's work.

Confiscated property

The Russian authorities say that fears for the safe return of the paintings explain their decision. In the past, cases registered in English courts have sought compensation from Russia for property confiscated after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

But a British official said these concerns were unfounded. There would have been "no question" of any of the paintings being "impounded".

On December 7, James Purnell, the Culture Secretary, gave a written assurance to Mikhail Shvydkoy, his Russian counterpart.

"I confirm that under English law, the property of a state, including works of art lent to an exhibition in this country, which are judged by a court not to be in use, or intended for use for commercial purposes, will be immune," wrote Purnell.