Your Paintings website publishes more than half of UK's oil paintings in six months

A national campaign to create an online catalogue of every publicly-owned oil painting in the UK online has assembled more than half of the country's estimated 200,000 treasures in less than six months.

The Public Catalogue Foundation and BBC-run Your Paintings mission has added 40,000 pieces to the site since launching in June 2011.

The ambitious project can now count 104,000 paintings on the site, with the public embellishing each work through a Facebook-style "tagging" feature which has drawn 1.3 million annotations from more than 5,000 contributors.

"Your Paintings is a worldwide showcase of the United Kingdom's paintings," said Andrew Ellis, the Director of the PCF, calling the results a "unique and rich learning resource."

"The public are invited to play an important role in building and enhancing this website. By tagging what can be seen in each work, everyone can contribute."

Thousands of galleries, museums, libraries and institutions have contributed to a formidably diverse archive, searchable by artist, collection and location and accompanied by links to the TV, radio and online information held by the BBC.

The latest paintings to be added represent a cast ranging from Joshua Reynolds to Bridget Riley, captured from collections stretching from National Trust sites in Devon to The University of Aberdeen. 
 
The initiative was recently rewarded with the top award in the Arts and Culture category at the British Interactive Media Awards.

• Visit Your Paintings to see the collection.

More of the paintings: