We’ve had great feedback from everyone to date so thank you all for your encouraging comments and suggestions! We’ve also had overwhelming participation in our Art Detective scheme, with hundreds of you helping us to uncover the mysteries behind some of the paintings. The PCF will soon start the detailed process of investigating all these new insights but we can always use more so if you know something about any of the paintings in the public collection, do get in touch! (Remember to include the title and URL of the painting in your email to us, if possible). 

Over the coming weeks and months we are planning to launch new collections from across the UK and exciting new features too such as resources for teachers and My Paintings - a tool which you can use to create your own collection. 

In the meantime you can get your artistic fix by watching our fascinating and entertaining collection of celebrity Guided Tours. Planning a holiday in the UK? Let Matt Baker take you on a tour of British landscapes. Looking for love? Check out Tracey’s Cox’s insights into the body language of romantic paintings. 

Tracey Cox on the Art of Romance

Got a favourite guided tour? We’d love to hear your feedback so leave us a comment below and watch this space for further updates.

In seeking the answers to some of these questions, Alastair uncovers stories of scandal, war, exile, revolution, paranoia, and economic turmoil - stories which range from the Holocaust to the discreet banks of Zurich and the boom of Japan in the 1980s.

These works of art are mostly locked away in private collections. But to accompany the BBC1 programme, Alastair Sooke presents a Guided Tour to great art that you can see for free, in public galleries and collections around the country.

"Here's my selection of paintings I particularly like which can be seen, for free, in museums and galleries all around the country, even though the artists who made them are the most coveted and most expensive artists in the world"

Once you've taken the Guided Tour, let us know if any of the work by Picasso, Monet, Bacon, Titian or Van Gogh in Alistair's Guided Tour caught your eye. Have you seen these paintings in the flesh, or are you planning a trip to a gallery to see them? Plus, any recommendations for credit crunch friendly art viewings are very welcome.

Alastair Sooke's Top Ten Most Valuable Paintings in the World is on BBC One at 9pm. Let us know what you think.

Sandsfoot Castle, Dorset by John Everett, 1924

“http://bbc.in/jeo2yP one of my gandpa's paintings up on a BBC site :D” Tweeted by SDLRob

Chelmsford Shoppers by Charles Middleton, c.1980

”Sold a painting at my degree show 23 years ago, and up it pops on the BBC Your Paintings website. http://t.co/4lXgsgR”  Tweeted by jameshobbsart

An Island near the Shore by James Hobbs

"Lovely old #Margate painting on the bbc site: Garner's (The Marine Library), High Street, Margate, Kent - http://bbc.in/m5NkOQ" - Tweeted by ‘HarbourMonkey’.

Garner's (The Marine Library), High Street, Margate, Kent

And finally… a talking cat: "BBC - Your Paintings - The Talking Cat - http://bbc.in/kqC5wV" Tweeted by @stevejbyrne. This painting certainly shows the diversity of the national collection!

The Talking Cat by Dez Quarréll, 1998

So what other paintings have you spotted?

So what is Your Paintings all about?

The UK holds in its galleries & civic buildings one of the largest collections of oil paintings in the world, a treasure trove of tens of thousands of individual works, including pieces by some of the world’s leading artists, from world famous names such as Picasso to Rubens to unknown local painters. 

These paintings aren’t just of interest to art lovers, they also make up one of the biggest pre-photographic records of 600 years of British society, life and culture, a hugely important educational and historical resource.

And yet the public’s access to this incredible resource has to date been limited by physical constraints: some 80% of the works are in storage, or otherwise unavailable to view; those that can be seen are scattered around the country, looked after by a diverse range of institutions, from the major national galleries right through to individual council offices and even fire stations, with no way for the public to see the scale of the combined collection. The vast majority have never been published online before.

Now the Public Catalogue Foundation (a charity established to document and photograph this national collection) have teamed up with the BBC and thousands of galleries and collections right across the UK to make the entire national oil painting collection permanently viewable in one place for the first time, for free to the general public.

Our beta launch today showcases the first 63,000 of these paintings, covering works from over 800 collections by over 15,000 individual artists. This is the start of a rolling programme of releases – we’ll be updating the site with thousands of new paintings in the coming months, in line with the PCF’s photography and digitisation programme, with the ambition of having the entire national collection – some 200,000 paintings - online by the end of 2012.

We really hope you enjoy using the site, and we'd love you to contact us with any comments, suggestions or improvements.