• Solomon was a pioneering Jewish painter who campaigned for women artists
• Export bar is to allow time for a UK gallery or institution to acquire the painting

A Pre-Raphaelite painting worth £314,880 is at risk of leaving the UK unless a buyer can be found to save the work for the nation.

Rebecca Solomon was known for showing an awareness of inequality in her work and this painting titled A Young Teacher depicts sitter Fanny Eaton, whose mother was a former enslaved woman in Jamaica, posing as an Indian nursemaid. The piece provides a nuanced and sensitive perspective on gender and ethnicity in the 19th century.

Rebecca Solomon hails from a prominent Jewish family and went on to become a pioneering pre-Raphaelite artist. She was also active in social reform movements, including as part of a group of thirty-eight artists who petitioned the Royal Academy of Arts to open its schools to women.

Parliamentary Under Secretary of State Stuart Andrew said:

Rebecca Solomon’s work shone a light on inequality and prejudice at a time when these subjects were far from mainstream. Her painting A Young Teacher has more to tell us about gender and ethnicity in the 19th century and I hope a UK buyer comes forward so we can continue to learn more about attitudes at the time.

The Minister’s decision follows the advice of the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest. The committee agreed that the painting was extremely important in the context of diversity and representation of Black and Asian figures in 19th century Britain, as well as noting the lack of professional, female Jewish artists of this period in British public collections.

Committee member Professor Mark Hallett said:

Despite its seemingly undramatic character, Solomon’s painting is a bold and ambitious meditation on issues of gender, race, intimacy and education. The Young Teacher cries out for further investigation and interpretation: new research on its creator, subject-matter, production and display has the potential to enrich our understanding not only of the picture itself, but of Victorian art and culture more generally. For all these reasons, the Committee very much hopes it finds a home in the UK.

The RCEWA made its recommendation on the grounds that its departure from the UK would be a misfortune because it was of outstanding significance for the study of women artists and Jewish art in 19th century Britain, as well as to the history of art and Empire.

The decision on the export licence application for the painting will be deferred for a period ending on 1st February 2023 inclusive. At the end of the first deferral period owners will have a consideration period of 15 business days to consider any offer(s) to purchase the painting at the recommended price of £314,880. The second deferral period will commence following the signing of an Option Agreement and will last for three months.

ENDS

Notes to editors

1. Organisations or individuals interested in purchasing the painting should contact the RCEWA on 0161 934 4317.
2. Provenance: Cyril and Agnes Baynes, Isle of Wight, gifted in 1964 to their gardener and housekeeper, then by descent.
3. The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest is an independent body, serviced by the Arts Council, which advises the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on whether a cultural object, intended for export, is of national importance under specified criteria.
4. Arts Council England is the national development agency for creativity and culture. ACE have set out their strategic vision in Let’s Create that by 2030 want England to be a country in which the creativity of each of us is valued and given the chance to flourish and where everyone of us has access to a remarkable range of high-quality cultural experiences. ACE invest public money from the Government and The National Lottery to help support the sector and to deliver this vision.
5. Following the Covid-19 crisis, the Arts Council developed a £160 million Emergency Response Package, with nearly 90% coming from the National Lottery, for organisations and individuals needing support. ACE are also one of the bodies responsible for administering the Government’s unprecedented Culture Recovery Fund.

• Over £700k in funding has been allocated between 10 innovative organisations to develop remote site sensing and monitoring technologies
• Remote Monitoring of Sensitive Sites competition, run on behalf of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA)
• Remote Monitoring of Sensitive Sites sought innovations to enable the collection of data remotely on assets, infrastructure and the surrounding environment/ecosystem answering to the 3 challenge areas

The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) are pleased to announce that 10 organisations have won a share of over £700k in funding to develop innovations that help to monitor sensitive sites without the physical presence of humans.

The NDA is charged with cleaning up the UK’s 17 earliest nuclear sites safely, securely and cost-effectively. It is vital that monitoring, inspection and security capabilities remain fit for purpose, and, where appropriate, are continuously improved or enhanced in order to maintain safe, secure and more efficient operations and to inform future decommissioning efforts across the UK.

The funded technologies from this competition may help promote more proactive decision making in managing these sites, while also reducing the risk associated with undertaking potentially hazardous operations compared to current methods. For this competition, innovators were asked to submit their technologies and solutions to help address the following challenge areas:

Challenge 1: Built environment and infrastructure

This challenge area sought innovative solutions that enhance the detection, identification, and monitoring of complex and high-value physical assets, including equipment and civil structures. For example:

• changes in colour
• water collecting
• physical anomalies i.e. cracks, texture change
• organic growth
• thermal changes over time

Challenge 2: Environmental monitoring and land use

This challenge area sought innovative solutions which enable users to remotely monitor and effectively report on the use of land and environmental aspects of the NDA estate. For example:

• early warning of water effects
• monitoring air quality
• change in vegetation around a site
• monitoring site/non-site interface e.g. traffic surveys
• environmental impact on and around sites e.g. coastal erosion, monitoring sub-surface infrastructure.

Challenge 3: Security and resilience

This challenge area sought innovations to deliver proportionate security in line with the site risk reduction curve during the decommissioning process. For example:

• perimeter monitoring
• resilient and real time hazard, risk and threat identification
• autonomous interception and prevention capabilities
• intelligence-based alerting system

Andrew Gray, Innovation Delivery Manager, Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said:

“We are excited to be working with DASA on this competition which has generated a huge amount of interest across many different sectors.

“The competition will support the development of new technologies for remote sensing and application of novel approaches, which will enable us to monitor our large and geographically distributed estate.

“This will help us deliver our decommissioning mission in different ways, reduce risk and provide additional insights for improving how we manage our infrastructure, and inform decision-making processes. We are eager to see how the creative solutions being put forward by the supply chain will evolve.”

10 projects have been awarded Remote Monitoring of Sensitive Sites funding to fast-track their novel ideas. They will present their concept solutions to a range of government stakeholders in summer 2023.

The winners are:

Earth-i Limited

Earth-i Limited’s project seeks to demonstrate an asset mapping and monitoring system that uses high resolution satellite Earth Observation data combined with airborne and terrestrial data sources to provide a rich set of information layers for NDA decision makers.

ANRA Technologies

ANRA Technologies seeks to develop an Uncrewed X System (UxS) Mission Manager with an Integrated and Distributed Common Operating Picture (IDCOP) for remote monitoring of sensitive sites across the NDA estate.

Archangel Imaging

Archangel Imaging’s ATOM project aims to create a mobile, autonomous surveillance system which can be augmented with a range of third-party solutions or updated with specific algorithms to maintain a technological edge in remote site monitoring.

Lynkeos Technology Ltd

This project utilises the passive non-destructive testing field of muography, which uses natural radiation to monitor integrity of complex structural challenges. This project seeks to develop a portable capability for monitoring subterranean and ageing reinforced concrete infrastructure.

Durham University

The project proposes an autonomous wide-area surveillance capability for remote perimeter monitoring of sensitive sites through the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled persistent, all-condition sensing coupled with world-leading real-time anomaly detection algorithms.

ISS Aerospace

This innovation seeks to utilise an autonomous unmanned aerial system (UAS) with on-board real time AI processing, in combination with specially developed intelligent detectors capable of learning their environment. The UAS will respond to changes detected by unattended ground based sensors which collect data for temperature, humidity, noise, motion, and air quality.

National Physical Laboratory

National Physical Laboratory, in collaboration with Metrosol Limited and the University of Manchester, seeks to develop a novel thermometer to replace conventional sensors in harsh environments up to 600 °C. The thermometer will use non-invasive electronic Johnson noise to measure temperature, eliminating drift and leading directly to improved reliability and reduced calibration costs.

Autonomous Devices Limited

This project seeks to develop Theia, an aerial robotic system for collecting close-range and contact-based sensor data from inaccessible parts of an asset, bridging the gap between wide-area, stand-off, remote inspection, and detailed, close-up, manual investigation

Telespazio UK Ltd

This project focuses on utilising non-intrusive satellite based technology to monitor the environment, providing early insight into potentially risky areas, reducing the need for on-site investigations and supporting informed and timely decision-making.

Decision Lab Ltd

Decision Lab Ltd seeks to develop an advanced set of competitively trained reinforcement learning AI agents, AUDI can improve site security and resilience through remote sensing.

Learn more about the Remote Monitoring of Sensitive Sites competition.

Thank you Mr Chair. This week, President Putin has continued to mercilessly punish the Ukrainian people for Russia’s poor performance on the battlefield. His military commanders have conducted missile strikes targeting power stations and water supplies throughout Ukraine. More widely, they continue to employ Iranian-provided Shaed-136 UAVs (otherwise known as suicide drones) and cruise missiles against civilians, residential buildings and civilian infrastructure in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.

None of this achieves any military purpose. Putin’s only aim is to spread terror and to deprive Ukrainian families of shelter, light, and heat as harsh winter approaches. This is a particularly cruel act of vengeance which will cause most suffering amongst Ukraine’s most vulnerable, including the elderly and young.

President Putin and his Russian military leaders have consistently planned and authorised operations which have breached international humanitarian law.

Mr Chair, when this Forum last convened, I asked our Russian colleague directly to explain how they could justify such callous attacks on civilians. He did not respond. Instead, he again elected to retreat from this chamber – a message in itself.

Perhaps my Russian colleague knows he is complicit in trying to hide the disastrous truth of the Kremlin’s appalling and failing illegal invasion of Ukraine from his fellow citizens. Perhaps he knows that deliberate attacks on civilians are a clear breach of international humanitarian law. Perhaps he recognises the horrifying irony that whilst President Putin claims that Ukraine is part of Russia and Ukrainians are Russians, he also calls them Nazis who must be bombed without mercy.

Mr Chair, today we have again heard a litany of the Kremlin’s lies, disinformation and incredulous conspiracy theories. These are clumsy attempts to distract from the enduring poor performance and failings of the Russian military on the battlefield.

The Wagner Group, the private military company on which the Russian military has been increasingly reliant, now appears not only to be recruiting Russian convicts, but has expanded its recruitment to include individuals suffering from serious diseases and medical conditions – a sign of desperation to recruit numbers not fighters.

Meanwhile, in many cases, newly mobilised Russian reservists have been deployed to Ukraine poorly equipped. Open source images suggest they are typically issued with AKMs, a weapon first introduced in 1959, many of which are likely to be in barely usable condition. Some appear to have been sent to Ukraine without weapons at all.

Badly trained and badly equipped amateurs are being sent to reinforce Russia’s poorly equipped and poorly led, demoralised professional soldiers.

Mr Chair, the nuclear rhetoric we have heard today is irresponsible, including the absurd claim that Ukraine plans to detonate a radiological “dirty bomb” on its own territory. No other country is talking about nuclear use. No country is threatening Russia nor threatening President Putin. He should be clear that for the UK and our Allies, any use at all of nuclear weapons would fundamentally change the nature of this conflict. There would be severe consequences for Russia.

Mr Chair, as we have discussed previously, the Russian/Belarusian “regional grouping of forces” remains unlikely to be combat capable, not least because Russia is unlikely to be able to generate combat-ready formations of the size announced because of the number of forces it has committed in Ukraine and associated resourcing issues.

Separately, on 17 October, imagery showed two MiG-31K interceptor jets were almost certainly parked at the Machulishchi Airfield in Belarus. Also located with the aircraft were objects likely associated with the AS-24 KILLJOY air launch ballistic missile – which has not previously been deployed in Belarus.

It is worth noting that neither the “regional grouping of forces” nor the deployment of the KILLJOY ballistic missile currently provide a significant tactical advantage to Russia and so it is likely that these deployments aim to provide a distraction and to portray Belarus as increasingly complicit in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

We call on the Belarusian regime to recognise this, desist from supporting Russia’s attempts to stoke further instability in the region and to stop its active support of Russia’s illegal invasion, which itself constitutes a breach of international law.

Mr Chair, President Putin and the Russian military leadership are demonstrating an unimaginable level of barbarity and depravity as they unleash their frustrations on the Ukrainian people. But they continue to fail to understand that every horrendous attack strengthens the Ukrainian resolve to defend their homeland from a brutal and barbaric invader. The UK remains steadfast – for however long it takes – to ensure that the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the independence of Ukraine is fully restored. Thank you.