D’Offay sells £125m collection for a song

One of the art world's most influential dealers, Anthony d'Offay, has decided to turn philanthropist. He has agreed to give almost all of his £125m collection – including personal gifts from Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys – for cost price to the nation. The collection of 725 postwar and contemporary works includes works by Gerhard Richter, Bruce Nauman, Damien Hirst, Diane Arbus and Bill Viola. The dealer, who closed his famous London gallery in 2002, has sold the art at the original price paid - £26.5m - or one-fifth of its current value. "It transforms the national collection," said Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Gallery.

Jointly owned and managed by the National Galleries of Scotland and the Tate, the collection will be called Artist Rooms, split into 50 rooms' worth of contemporary art by 25 artists and showcased across Britain. Unlike most donors on this scale, D'Offay, 68, has not asked for his name to be attached to the collection.

D'Offay, born in Sheffield, began his art dealing career in London in the late Seventies. He went on to hold defining shows by the likes of Lucian Freud, Gilbert & George and Andy Warhol. In the 1990s he was instrumental in the movement that became known as the Young British Artists, or YBAs - representing and helping the careers of Rachel Whiteread and Sarah Lucas among others.

Serota, who was heavily involved in brokering the deal, compared d'Offay to the 19th-century industrialists Henry Tate and Samuel Courtauld. "It is an extraordinary act of philanthropy - this represents most of Anthony’s wealth,” he said. “It will be a legacy for future generations."