During the past 12 years, the Art Fund has helped to mount public campaigns that have assisted museums in buying ten major works (or collections) worth a total of more than £70m. Although the fund contributed less than £5m from its own resources, its seed money and moral support proved vital in encouraging other donors, large and small, to come forward. Without its campaigns, most of these objects would not have been acquired by public collections. Four of the works had been subject to export deferrals: Raphael’s Madonna of the Pinks (1506-07), acquired by the National Gallery in 2004 (£22m); the Macclesfield Psalter (around 1330), acquired by the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, in 2005 (£1.7m); Turner’s The Blue Rigi, Sunrise (1842), acquired by the Tate in 2007 (£5m); and Van Dyck’s Self-portrait (around 1640), acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in 2014 (£10m).
