The National Gallery is undoubtedly facing a crisis. Loaned masterpieces by Titian and Poussin are about to be put on the market. And how can we stump up the many millions that will be necessary to buy them? The likelihood is that they will be sold abroad. The loss rips a hole in the fabric of our heritage.

Or does it? Look at the list of other art works which Chris Bryant thinks we are most at risk of losing. Fewer than than a half are by British artists or artists working in Britain. The rest were, in the first place, acquired from abroad by a nation which had produced no Titians or Rembrandts of its own. Art was a trophy by which competing countries could manifest their power. Paintings were not icons of an art-historical legacy. They were symbols of status. And canvases were swapped between monarchs and connoisseurs and collectors like children swap Pokémon cards in the hope of getting the whole set.

The pack was constantly being shuffled. Think of Charles I: his art collection was unparalleled in his day. But after his execution, Parliament decided to liquidate its royal assets. The Tintorettos and Raphaels, the Velázquez and Rubens all went. Some found their way to their countries of origin; others, eventually, were clawed back by the British when, many years later, they again came up for sale.

The ownership of masterpieces becomes a monitor of national power. Artworks shift about as the balance changes. And that’s one of the reasons we resent losing our pictures.

Their ownership is a form of cultural imperialism. And perhaps we can’t quite face up to the fact that our Empire is over. We proudly proclaim that a work has been “saved” for the nation as if the Americans, the current global leaders who wanted to buy it, were intending to toss it on to a bonfire. A picture put on display in a public gallery overseas may well be just as accessible as it ever was in some private home with restricted public openings.

Of course, many of the pictures that Bryant has on his list have an indubitable national importance. William Hogarth’s Cholmondeley Family is a masterwork by probably our greatest home-grown talent. Gainsborough’s Sir Henry Bate tells a touchingly personal as well as a painterly tale.

Such images are part of our history. They are the pictures we should keep, at the cost of Italian Renaissance masters, however lovely to look at. And maybe the time has come for our national museums also to look at this idea. Thousands of works languish unseen in underground storerooms. We hoard up our artworks and so boost the very market prices that we then complain we can never meet. It would prove a complicated issue. But we can’t hold on to everything.

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