Access Thousands of Free Artworks from Museums and Libraries On Artvee

Discover this free image bank filled with paintings, drawings, and illustrations by artists from centuries ago

Over recent years, important museums and libraries around the world have been granting access to their public domain art collections for free use.

Artvee is a website that classifies and groups the best images in one place, making them easier to discover, download, and use. In their archives, you can find works by artists such as Rembrandt van Rijn, Claude Monet, Raphael, and Sandro Botticelli. Here we explain how to navigate the site and share some examples of the type of work you will be able to access.

Where are these images from?

Many of these images come from museums and libraries, but which ones in particular? Artvee's sources include major institutions such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Rijksmuseum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) in New York, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Getty Museum, the Library of Congress, and the New York Library of Art.

Why are they free to use?

These images are now in the public domain because enough time has now passed for their copyright protection license to have expired.

How can I find them?

Using Artvee's search engine, you can filter categories such as abstract art, landscape, mythology, drawings, illustrations, botany, fashion, figurative art, religion, animal desserts, history, Japanese art, and still life.

The site also gives you the option to search by artist. You will find works by Rembrandt van Rijn, Claude Monet, Raphael, and Sandro Botticelli in this amazing gallery.

Subjects are also grouped together, such as nudes, war, roads, allegory, geometry, performance, horses, motherhood, and history.

Finally, you can also find book illustrations from the site’s own collections and those created by users, including illustrations from fairy tales; covers of popular American songs; and some even more peculiar ones, such as adverts selling bicycles that are over a hundred years old.

To download these images, double-click on the image you’ve chosen and select the resolution you want. The images are available in a standard size, 1714 x 2496px, and in a larger size, 1857 x 4160px. Visit the art gallery here.

English version by @eloiseedgington.

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