The Victoria and Albert Museum is being renovated

Brian Murgatroyd, from West Sussex, gave �13,000 to the museum to repair the paintings after reading in the paper that they were disintegrating.

The 76-year-old, who died earlier this year, was an admirer of the artist.

Turner's Life-Boat, painted in 1831, and East Cowes Castle (1827-28) were the two paintings to benefit.

According to Mark Evans, the V&A's senior curator of paintings, Mr Murgatroyd contacted him after the article was published.

'Distressed'

"It was a bolt from the blue for us," Dr Evans said. "I hoped to show him the paintings, but I was very distressed that he'd passed away before being able to see them".

Mr Murgatroyd, who worked as an investment banker, had made similar donations in the past after reading stories in The Times.

In 1996, he gave �80,000 to Oxford's Ashmolean Museum to save a sculpture by Antonio Canova from being sold to a foreign museum.

The same Times article prompted a similar donation from an anonymous reader, who gave �28,000 to Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum to restore a 16th Century Flemish triptych.

The two Turner paintings will hang in the V&A's new Paintings Galleries, which form part of a planned redevelopment for the South Kensington museum.