Increasing numbers of museums and galleries are making the digital versions of their paintings and other works of art freely available – many under a CC0 licence.
A CC0 licence means that you can: copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking for permission. There is no legal requirement that you attribute the image, only an expectation that you will voluntarily do so if requested.
The latest large institution to offer such images is the Paris Musées http://parismuseescollections.paris.fr/en
Paris Musées is a public entity that oversees the 14 municipal museums of Paris, including the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Petit Palais and the Catacombs.
They are offering more than 100,000 Open Access images via its Collections Portal. You can download a file that contains a high definition (300 DPI) image, a document with details about the selected work and a guide of best practices for using and citing the sources of the image. If an image is CC0 you will see the CC0 icon below the image in the detailed record.
The Portal has masterpieces by incredible artists including: Rembrandt, Monet, Cezanne, Courbet and Delacroix.
We’ve added Paris Musées to our growing list of such galleries in the ‘Images’ section of our ‘Copyright Guide’ at: https://stir.libapps.com/libguides/admin_c.php?g=530489&p=3628211
Clare Allan
Senior Research Librarian