The St Louis Art Museum has received a donation of 225 artworks worth an approximate US$50m (€40m, £31.7m) from the late CC Johnson Spink and Edith Spink.

The collection includes works from artists such as Rembrandt Peale and Norman Rockwell, as well as more than 200 works of Asian art ranging from Chinese ceramics of the Neolithic period to works from Meiji-era Japan.

The Spinks’ Asian art collection was developed specifically with the intent of filling major gaps in the St Louis Art Museum’s collection and with the goal of allowing the museum to present a complete history of Chinese ceramics from prehistoric times to the end of the imperial system.

Many of the works included in the Spink gift are already on display at the museum in the Asian Art and American Art galleries thanks to a series of long-term loans approved by Edith Spink in 2004. In 2015, several dozen ceramic pieces from the Spink Collection will be displayed in the museum’s redeveloped Gallery 230.

"This extraordinary gift is the result of three decades of strategic collecting by Johnson and Edith, who were guided by a shared desire to expand and elevate the museum’s collection," said the museum's director, Brent R. Benjamin. "I am grateful for their generosity, and all of us at the museum are excited to include their legacy as an essential part of our visitors' experience.”

Charles Claude Johnson Spink died in 1992 at the age of 75 and was the publisher of the US title Sporting News – started by his family in 1886. His wife, Edith died in 2011 at the age of 90.