The British government has stopped the export of a cricket painting from 1763 worth £1,215,000 because it is thought to be quintessentially English and a national treasure.

Those who want to sell The Cricketers, which is oil on canvas and measures 99.1cm x 124.5cm, say it is by an American-born artist Benjamin West and features five Americans having a friendly chat after a game in Kew in England. They had come over from America and were students at the time. One is shown leaning on a cricket bat.

The government feels the painting is at risk of being lost to America unless a buyer can be found in Britain.

Arts minister Stuart Andrew said: “Cricket is enjoyed by millions of people across the world and this fascinating painting tells the story of the rise of the sport during the 18th century.

“It is a wonderful and rare depiction of the early development of one of our most loved games. I hope a buyer comes forward to save the work for the nation so we can give it another innings in the UK.”

The sale has been stopped for the time being after the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, the ministry concerned, received advice from its “Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest”.

“The Committee noted that the painting came at a crucial period of the development of cricket as an elite sport and it was a rare depiction of an early game of cricket,” the minister added. “The Committee also suggested that identifying the background to the painting would be an interesting research avenue and would add to its historical importance.”

Committee member Professor Mark Hallett, who specialises in the history of British art, said: “Together with its interest as a sporting painting, West’s picture is notable for being a rare group portrait of young colonial Americans in England.

This kind of work, known as a ‘conversation piece’, was more commonly commissioned by British aristocrats to mark their Grand Tour through Italy. Here, however, the format is repurposed to fit the needs of a group of wealthy American friends who were studying in Britain in the early 1760s.

“The Cricketers powerfully demonstrates the extent to which these men were happy to identify themselves with what was often described as the ‘mother country’; some twelve years later, however, their world and their allegiances were to be thrown into flux by the American Revolution.

West’s picture, made in his mid-twenties and one of the very first he produced on arriving in London in 1763, also illustrates the developing talents of an artist who was to enjoy great fame later in his career (for depicting the deaths of British heroes General Wolfe and Admiral Lord Nelson), and who became the second President of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1792.”

The sitters are traditionally identified as the brothers Andrew and James Allen, of Pennsylvania; Ralph Wormeley, of Virginia; and Ralph Izard and Arthur Middleton, of South Carolina. All sons of wealthy, influential colonial American families, they are shown outdoors, at leisure playing cricket. The picture commemorates their shared experience in the “mother country” and captures a world soon to be fractured by American revolutionary politics, in which the sitters took opposing sides.

It is understood the painting may be owned by a descendent of the loyalist Allen family, now based in the UK, who arranged to sell the work in 2021 to an international buyer.