It grabbed headlines earlier this year when it helped secure Titian's Diana and Actaeon for the National Gallery. But most of our regional public galleries have also had cause to thank it in recent years.

The art gallery and museum in Cheltenham has been enriched by the funding of both paintings and Arts and Crafts furniture, its great speciality.

The Somerset County Museum in Taunton displays 17th-century silverware by two local makers, Robert Wade I and Thomas Dare II, thanks to the fund's help, and the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum's collection of late Victorian views of the city also owes much to it.

These are simply random examples, and not surprisingly, both Bristol and Bath have also benefited greatly over the years.

And now, by no means for the first time, Chepstow Museum has cause to thank the fund for helping it acquire an important watercolour by the 19th-century Romantic artist John Martin.

View on the River Wye, Looking towards Chepstow Castle, Monmouthshire (1844), cost £35,000, with the Art Fund, which is financed by its 80,000 members and other donations, weighing in with £11,000. Another great supporter, the MLA/V&A purchase grant fund, came up with £9,000.

Martin, traditionally known for his oil paintings and engravings made from his work, exhibited four watercolours of views of the Wye at the Royal Academy between 1845 and 1850. Three of them were already in public collections in Canada, the United States and the UK, and experts believe this is the fourth.

"The work is part of the town's artistic heritage," says Andrew Macdonald, acting director of the Art Fund.

And at the museum, curator Anne Rainsbury says the purchase would have been impossible without outside help: "It's certainly helped us realise our aim to acquire works of artistic quality relating to the Wye Tour."