THE National Gallery of Australia is "extremely disappointed" at the sale of historic paintings of a kangaroo and dingo to a museum in London.
A UK government export ban has blocked the NGA from from buying the 18th century works by George Stubbs, which were secured by London's National Maritime Museum on Wednesday.
Kongouro from New Holland and a companion painting, Portrait of a Large Dog, are the first non-indigenous paintings of a kangaroo and dingo and have been on the NGA's acquisition list for more than 40 years.
They were commissioned by Joseph Banks, the botanist who accompanied Cook on his 1768 voyage to Australia and made sketches of the then-unknown specimens.
The NGA has been negotiating to buy the works for the past three years and says the export ban had deprived Australian audiences of "two of the most historically significant works of art in the story of our nation's visual heritage".
"The National Gallery of Australia is extremely disappointed with the outcome of this British process," the gallery said in statement.
"The two Stubbs works represent the beginning of Australia's rich visual culture and the Gallery believes they have much greater relevance to the development of Australian imagery and art than to Britain's maritime history."
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