Fearing taxes after Brexit, dealers moved artworks worth millions out of UK

Among the thousands of trucks backed up in Dover last month trying to get across the Channel, one was carrying a painting by Henri Matisse. A piece by the Argentine-born artist Lucio Fontana was also in the queue, along with tens of millions of dollars of other artworks.

The owners wanted to get their art back to the continent before the U.K. left the European Union’s single market.

Before Dec. 31, European artworks could, like all other goods, move freely between the EU and the U.K. with minimal restrictions and without cumbersome tax and customs procedures. At the end of the Brexit