The search for Exportingart's favourite painting has produced a short-list of ten works. Louise Jury reports on the contest, while Tom Lubbock reviews the selections chosen by the public Even allowing for the tweaking of a panel of experts asked to ensure that the list was "balanced," the first round of voting has shown that the public has eclectic tastes. The choices range from The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck, from 1434, to David Hockney's 35-year-old portrait of his friends Ossie Clark, the late fashion designer, with his wife, Celia Birtwell, and cat, Percy. Given the ubiquity of John Constable's The Hay Wain on everything from table mats to biscuit barrels, it was, perhaps, a sure bet for inclusion. Vincent van Gogh's eternally popular Sunflowers and Edouard Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère were also certainties. For JMW Turner, the question was which of his works stood out from his vast oeuvre. It proved to be The Fighting Temeraire, his depiction of the last journey of a famous warship to the ship-breaker. Four out of the 10 shortlisted works are owned by the National Gallery but the Courtauld, the Tate, Birmingham Art Gallery and the Sir John Soane's Museum are also represented. The only gallery outside England is the National Galleries of Scotland, with Reverend Dr Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch, attributed to the Scottish portraitist Sir Henry Raeburn. Rita McLean, head of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, said it was delighted to be the only local authority gallery with a picture in the selection, with the Ford Madox Brown in which he paints his own family. "It's one of our most popular images - it's such a compelling image," she said. The voting now recommences on the Today programme website and text message (84844, with the name of the painting). The winner will be announced on air from the National Gallery on 5 September. The Independent's art critic, Tom Lubbock, said the list showed a public with hit-and-miss tastes. "Nobody could call it lively. I should think even Her Majesty the Queen would have compiled a more exciting list. Yet I'm sure the chosen 10 do reflect public taste pretty accurately: sometimes absolutely right, sometimes bafflingly wrong. "The Piero, the Raeburn, the Manet, the Van Gogh: no queries there. On the other hand, the two greatest British artists, George Stubbs and William Blake, are overlooked, as is the fact that British collections hold extraordinary paintings by Titian, Poussin, Rembrandt, Watteau, Degas. "If you must have a pre-Raph, then it has to be Millais, not Brown. If there's only going to be one 20th-century British painter, then Wyndham Lewis, Stanley Spencer and Francis Bacon all score over Hockney. And I would like to see The Fighting Temeraire loaded on to The Hay Wain, and them both quietly wheeled off to some nice art dump." Martin Gayford, the art critic, who was on the selection panel with Jonathan Yeo, an artist, and Deborah Bull, the dancer, has already admitted that there was strong polling for Turner in the initial nominations and a strong desire from the organizers for anything but The Hay Wain to win. The panel was asked to modify the shortlist so that not all were by the same artist or of the same period or theme. http://www.exportingart.com/paintings