The National Portrait Gallery is launching an appeal to buy a £350,000 self-portrait cast made from the frozen blood of artist Marc Quinn.

The Art Fund is kickstarting fundraising with a £100,000 award and the gallery has found £50,000 of its own cash.

But it is now seeking public support in its bid to buy the fourth in a series of blood heads, called Self, by 44-yearold Quinn.

He has made one head every five years since 1991, using eight or nine pints of his own blood, to document his own ageing. The first was shown in Charles Saatchi's 1997 Sensation exhibition of Young British Artists at the Royal Academy.

It became strongly associated with the BritArt movement and is regarded as one of the artist's most important works. But the most entertaining story about it - that the head melted in Charles Saatchi's freezer thanks to a power cut - was strongly denied by both the artist and then owner.

The National Portrait Gallery wants to buy the latest, made in 2006, for its contemporary collection. The first three are now in collections overseas and this would be the only version to join a British public gallery.

The gallery already owns an extensive array of self-portraits from the last 500 years and is interested in how contemporary artists deal with representing the human form. Sandy Nairne, the director of the National Portrait Gallery, said: "Marc Quinn's Self is a work of international significance - a brilliant and poignant extension to the genre of self-portraiture."

David Barrie, director of The Art Fund, added: "This extraordinary selfportrait belongs in the National Portrait Gallery's collection, and I hope that others will follow our lead in showing their support for this powerful work."

He described it as "one of the star exhibits at Sensation" and said it " confirmed Marc Quinn's reputation as one of the most innovative artists of his generation".

The price of the head - which is designed so that it can be melted, recast and refrozen when it is moved - has been agreed in a special deal with Quinn's gallery White Cube.

If Self makes it into the National Portrait Gallery it will add to another Quinn work already held there, his "portrait" of human genome scientist Sir John Sulston using the scientist's DNA.

Apart from Self, Quinn is best known for his statue, Alison Lapper Pregnant, which depicts a disabled model. It was displayed on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square in 2005.

Quinn was born and lives in London and was one of the first artists represented by Jay Jopling, the gallery dealer who has become a key international figure.

Donations for Self can be made at www.npg.org.uk.

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