Today, the BBC report that the campaign has been successful.

I understand that over a third of 11,433 individual donors ‘bought’ brushstokes, and that of the £552,198 raised in total (via post, phone and web), £73,281 – or 13 percent – was donated through the buy a brushstroke initiative.

In an effort to keep one of JMW Turner’s greatest paintings in the UK, the Tate and The Art Fund hope to raise at least £300,000 from the public via phone, postal donations and by donating £5 to “buy a brushstroke” online.

Tate needs to find a total of £4.9m (US$9.7m), and has allocated a record £2m to the purchase of The Blue Rigi, which represents 3 years’ interest from its endowment fund for the purchase of art. The Art Fund charity has added a further £500,000.

The BBC reports that a public appeal launched last month must raise the remaining £2.4m before 20 March, when the temporary export bar placed on the work by Culture Minister, David Lammy, will expire and the painting would be allowed to leave the country.

Several leading artists, including David Hockney, Peter Blake and Rachel Whiteread, have bought ‘brushstrokes’ to support the appeal.

As part of the campaign to save The Blue Rigi for the nation, for the first time ever the Tate has united Turner’s great Rigi watercolours. Painted in the Spring of 1842, The Blue Rigi will be shown alongside two companion pieces, The Red Rigi and The Dark Rigi, which capture the Swiss mountain at different times of day. The exhibition at Tate Britain opens today and will run until 25 March 2007.

Unlike “Your Name On Toast”, which I wrote about recently, this doesn’t quite add up to a ‘traffic pyramiding’ scheme, as you cannot ‘link’ your purchased brushstrokes through to your website. I just hope the appeal is as successful as Alex Tew’s efforts to help pay his way through university with his Million Dollar Homepage.