Dali's famed lobster telephone in Scotland 'saved for the nation'

One of the world's most famous Surrealist art works, the Lobster Telephone, has been bought by the National Galleries of Scotland to stop it leaving the country, according to a media report on Monday.

Salvador Dali's Lobster Telephone was sold at auction but was "saved for the nation" after UK museums were given the chance to match the sale price.

The famous sculpture will now go on display at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, the BBC reported.

It was bought for 853,000 pounds, most of which came from a private fund.

Dali's sculpture is one of the most instantly recognisable pieces of Surrealism, the art movement that explored the world of dreams and the subconscious mind.

The art work consists of an ordinary, working telephone, with a plaster lobster resting on the receiver.

It is one of 11 lobster telephones made for Dali's patron Edward James in the 1930s.

James was born in 1907 at his family's summer house, Greywalls, at Gullane, in East Lothian.

His family was immensely wealthy, owning a vast estate at West Dean in West Sussex.

The lobster receivers were made to fit to telephones at James's house in Wimpole Street, central London, and at West Dean.

Four of the lobsters were painted red, and seven were painted white.

The Lobster Telephones are now almost all in museum collections around the world.

The Tate Modern in London has a red version on a black telephone.

The white version acquired by the National Galleries of Scotland had remained with the Edward James Foundation in West Sussex.

It was sold at auction but because of its "artistic and historical importance" it was subject to an export license deferral.

This allowed the National Galleries to match the amount it had sold for, the report said.

The Henry and Sula Walton Fund provided 753,000 pounds of the money, with the rest coming from a grant from the Art Fund, the national fundraising charity for art.

Simon Groom, director of modern and contemporary art at the National Galleries of Scotland, said: "This major acquisition cements our position as one of the world's greatest collections of Surrealist art."