Three years after the Tate begged Damien Hirst to donate something to its collection because it could no longer afford his work, he announced yesterday that he would do his bit for the gallery that made his name and fortune more than a decade ago.

Weeks after claiming that he had sold his diamond-encrusted skull for £50 million to a “consortium of investors” – amid reports that he had been among them – the enfant terrible of the art world said that he would be donating four works to the Tate. They include the carcasses of a cow and calf, severed in half and pickled, which won him the Turner Prize in 1995.

Together, the four works are thought to be worth at least £10 million – significantly more than the Tate’s annual acquisitions fund of £1.5 million.

In 2004, Hirst was among 23 British artists who promised to give at least one of their works to the Tate after Sir Nicholas Serota, its director, pleaded for their help. But only seven – Louise Bourgeois, Antony Gormley, Richard Long, Paula Rego, Mark Wallinger, Anthony Caro and Fiona Rae – have so far given anything.

Those that have yet to donate an artwork include Chris Ofili, who won the Turner Prize in 1998 for attaching blobs of elephant dung to a Virgin Mary figure. Last year, the Tate was reprimanded severely by the Charity Commission for having paid him more than £600,000 for one of his artworks while he was a Tate trustee.

A Tate spokeswoman said yesterday that the gallery was in “ongoing discussions” with Ofili and others who made pledges in 2004.

Although Tate Modern has become the world’s most popular contemporary gallery, its director’s desperate appeal to the now-prominent artists is seen as a reflection of how power in the art world has moved from public galleries to artists and their dealers.

Sir Nicholas said in 2004 that the gallery’s level of funding from the Government had steadily declined over the past 20 years, while market prices had risen by as much as 1,000 per cent.

He noted that, from its creation in 1897, the Tate had been a beneficiary of significant bequests and gifts. Turner, Giacometti and Francis Bacon were among artists who donated works to the nation that would today be well beyond the gallery’s budget.

Hirst’s donation includes The Acquired Inability to Escape (1991), a large vitrine filled with cigarettes, a lighter, an ashtray and stubs, which the Tate praised for its use of a cigarette as a “multilayered symbol suggesting luxury, danger and death”.

The other pieces are Life without You (1991), an arrangement of sea shells on a desk , Who is Afraid of the Dark? (2002), one of the first in Hirst’s series of “fly paintings”, and Mother and Child Divided, which shows the animals bisected, the four halves displayed in separate tanks of formaldehyde solution. The latter is a 2007 copy of the original version from 1993, which is now in the Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo.

The Tate said that the gift would complement the Hirsts already in its collection, including Pharmacy (1992), the shell cabinet piece Forms without Life (1991), a suite of 13 prints from The Last Supper (1999) and a print from the series London, Untitled (1992).

In a statement, Hirst said yesterday: “I think giving works from my collection is a small thing if it means millions of people get to see the work displayed in a great space.”

Sir Nicholas said: “With such a limited budget for acquisitions, and when art market prices are high, Tate is indebted to artists such as Damien Hirst for working with us on building the collection.”

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