In art, as in life, there are those who hog the limelight, and those who get on with the often thankless backstage graft that makes it all happen. Fittingly, The Art Fund (formerly The National Art Collections Fund) has been unassumingly putting on just such a show for the public since 1903. Founded with the aim of purchasing, on the public's behalf, treasures that otherwise might leave the UK or disappear into private collections, the charity has quietly secured over 850,000 works of art, among them Velazquez's 'Rokeby' Venus and Canova's The Three Graces.

This revealing 10-part series examines a small but representative selection of some of the works of art that the Fund has helped British museums and galleries to buy. The objects covered exemplify the Fund's diverse approach: Roman antiquities mingle with Iron Age treasure and Rodin's The Kiss, while Whistlers, Titians and Gainsboroughs rub shoulders with works by Picasso, Jeff Wall and Lucien Freud. Since the works are housed in galleries throughout the UK, this rare opportunity to see such an enormously rich collection together demonstrates the breadth, variety and sheer number of works that The Art Fund has saved for the nation which just goes to prove the adage that it's the quiet ones you have to watch.

Former Royal Ballet principal dancer; author; journalist; TV presenter and staunch patron of the arts: we thought Deborah Bull was perfectly placed to present Saved for the Nation.

Since her retirement as a principal from The Royal Ballet, Deborah Bull has done anything but put her feet up. She's a governor of the BBC; she's addressed the Oxford Union on the subject of national arts funding and she instigated a Royal Opera House aid scheme for independent companies and artists.

Join her plus a selection of prominent critics and artists including Joan Bakewell; Tate director Nicholas Serota; British Museum director Neil MacGregor; David Attenborough; Dinos Chapman, Tim Marlow and many more as she celebrates a hundred of the greatest treasures that The Art Fund has saved for the nation.

Episode 10: 1994-the present

Jeff Wall (born 1946)
A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) (1993)
Tate
Acquired with Art Fund help in 1995.

Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553)
Judith with the Head of Holofernes (1530)
Burrell Collection
Acquired with Art Fund help in 1995.

Limoges
The Becket Casket (circa 1180)
V&A Picture Library
This work was acquired with Art Fund help in 1996.

Xie Chufang (active late-13th early -4th century)
Fascination of Nature (1321)
British Museum
Acquired with Art Fund help in 1998.

Botticelli (1444-1510)
Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child (circa 1485)
National Galleries of Scotland
Acquired with Art Fund help in 1999.

Sir Stanley Spencer (1891-1959)
Zacharias and Elizabeth (1913-1914)
Tate
Acquired with Art Fund help in 1999.

Titian (circa 1488-1576)
Venus Anadyomene (Venus Rising from the Sea) (circa 1520-1525)
National Gallery of Scotland
Acquired with Art Fund help in 2003.

Raphael (1483-1520)
Madonna of the Pinks (circa 1507-1508)
National Gallery
Acquired with Art Fund help in 2004

Mona Hatoum (born 1952)
Slicer (1999)
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
This work was acquired with Art Fund help in 2005.

James Turrell
Yorkshire Sculpture Park
2006