Selfless collector who helped save Standen for the nation

Arthur Grogan, who has died aged 86, was a discerning collector of late-19th-century British works of art and craftsmanship, an authority on the Arts and Crafts movement and a benefactor of public collections in Britain. Through his timely intervention and a generous donation, he and his wife, Helen, enabled the National Trust to accept Standen, a late-Victorian house in West Sussex designed by the architect Philip Webb, and one of the most remarkable surviving buildings of the period.

In 1972 Standen's owner, Helen Beale, died, bequeathing the house to the National Trust. It had been built for her father in 1895 by Webb, the friend and business partner of William Morris. Unlike most of Webb's buildings, Standen had survived unaltered. It was an example of Victorian design and craftsmanship at its best and most original. The trust wanted to accept the bequest, but was unable to do so because it was accompanied by an inadequate endowment.

Grogan approached the trust with a proposition of exceptional selflessness. He would sell his own house in Richmond, south-west London, make up the endowment by donating the proceeds to the trust and furnish Standen's rather bare walls with his collection of pictures. In exchange, he asked for a lease of the property and the post of honorary curator. The offer was accepted at once and for eight years the Grogans lived happily at Standen, dispensing hospitality and inspiring visitors with their enthusiasm for the period it represented.

Its light-filled rooms were redecorated and hung with Morris wallpapers and, to supplement the Beales' rather humdrum furniture, Grogan began collecting pieces by late-19th-century artists and craftsmen, as well as ceramics and sculpture of the period. Both Arthur and Helen Grogan were still working in London – he as an inspector of historic buildings, she as an architect – and neither ever learned to drive, so it was a measure of their commitment to Standen that each day they travelled to work and back by a laborious combination of buses and trains.

On a summer afternoon in 1977, the official opening of Standen was celebrated by a tea party at which the guest of honour, the historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, gave a memorable speech about the revival of interest in Victorian architecture.

Grogan was a kind and hospitable man, a natural teacher and wonderful company. But he was also highly strung and could be intolerant of those he deemed unsympathetic. At Standen, he fought with the trust's gardener over his taste in trees and the way he mowed the lawn in immaculate lines. After a while, as visitor numbers increased and the strain of living in a show-house began to tell, he asked the trust whether a flat could be created for him and his wife in the disused stables.

Much of the furniture and many of the pictures, textiles and ceramics that Grogan bought for the house had already been given to the trust, but he now proposed that, as payment for the cost of converting the stables, he would donate further pictures from his collection. The trust agreed to the move, but at the time had no mechanism for funding it in the way proposed. As a result, the Grogans left Standen and the trust had to buy the pictures.

It was a sad end to a story that had begun so happily. But most of the items Grogan collected for Standen remain in the house, a permanent reminder of the critical part he and his wife played in saving it and transforming it into a beautiful and absorbingly interesting Arts and Crafts family home that now attracts more than 80,000 visitors a year.

Grogan was born in Hampton Hill, south-west London, the second son of John Grogan, a physicist at the National Physical Laboratory at Teddington. His mother, Doris, died giving birth to a daughter. It was a sad household, run by a string of childcarers and housekeepers. Grogan and his brother went first to Pembroke House prep school, and then to King's College, Wimbledon. As Grogan grew up, he developed an interest in antiques of all sorts and spent his spare time combing junk shops and sale rooms for treasures.

On leaving school, he qualified as an architect at Richmond technical college, where he met Helen Sinclair, whom he married in 1951. He obtained a post as an inspector with the Historic Buildings Council, the predecessor of English Heritage. It was a job to which his gifts were ideally suited. His enthusiasm and eye for quality, and a streak of perversity in his nature that drew him to unfashionable causes, were to be of enduring benefit to the cause of building conservation in London.

Grogan was a member of a small team charged with drawing up lists of buildings worthy of statutory protection. At the time, he and Helen were living in Bedford Park, west London, a late-19th-century suburb described by John Betjeman as "probably the most significant in the western world". By the late 1950s this once-fashionable enclave had become down-at-heel and its houses, many of them designed by Richard Norman Shaw, were in multiple occupation. It was through Grogan's dogged advocacy that 356 of them were listed, and he is remembered by the local amenity society as the saviour of Bedford Park.

At the same time he began to collect paintings, watercolours and drawings by 19th-century artists whose work was then as little appreciated as the buildings of Norman Shaw. He claimed that in those days, he never paid more than £5 for a picture. In time, collecting became a passion. He frequented the Fine Art Society in Bond Street and the large Victorian house of Abbott and Holder in Barnes, where bargains were to be had from among unframed works of art stacked in piles. In due course, Grogan assembled a large and distinctive collection of works, mostly by the pre-Raphaelites and members of the New English Art Club.

In his later years, Grogan devoted much time and thought to planning the dispersal of the residue of his collection. By the end of his life, through the Art Fund, he had donated 167 items to public institutions across the country. Twenty-two paintings, including important works by Henry Herbert La Thangue and Sir George Clausen, were given to the Towner art gallery in Eastbourne, East Sussex. A chalk drawing by William Holman Hunt of his wife, Edith, is one of two works that went to Tate Britain, and a charming relief of a mother and child by Robert Anning Bell is one of 17 given to Cheltenham Art Gallery. Fifty pieces were given to the Williamson Gallery in Birkenhead and 49, mostly drawings and watercolours, are now in the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. In all, nine public collections benefited from Grogan's outstandingly generous gift to the nation.

Grogan is survived by his wife.

• Arthur Henry Grogan, art collector, born 31 December 1924; died 25 August 2011