Composer lends painting to Ashmolean exhibition

[Colin Harrison, curator of British art, with the painting]

LORD Lloyd Webber has loaned one of his paintings for a new art exhibition at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum.

The composer donated The Fall of Lucifer by Edward Burne-Jones to The Pre-Raphaelites and Italy show, which opens tomorrow and runs to December 5.

The exhibition brings together more than 140 pictures from the Ashmolean’s collection and loans from UK and global museums and private collections.

It is the first major art exhibition at the Beaumont Street museum’s exhibition galleries since it reopened last year after a £61m refit.

Colin Harrison, curator of British art, said he was delighted with the loan.

He said: “Exhibits have come from far and wide, including those from North America and Italy.”

It is being staged with the Ravenna Museum of Art in Italy, where the exhibition first opened.

Museum director Dr Christopher Brown said: “The Pre-Raphaelites and Italy is a real triumph for the Ashmolean.

“Displaying one of the great strengths of our own collection with loans from around the world has allowed us to put on an exhibition which is both a visual delight, and an interesting and revealing treatment of the subject.”