IMAGE RESOURCES
This listing provides a sampling of prominent rights holders, many of whom offer open access/creative commons licences. The listing is an ongoing project and we encourage you to submit suggestions for additions or amendments to those that we have published here.
The images are loosely grouped under Open Access/Creative Commons licences and Other Licences which may or may not require the payment of a fee. As many institutions have both free and paid for offerings, some organisations will be listed in both sections.
To suggest additions or changes to this image resource listing please email us through the form on our Contact Us page.
OPEN ACCESS/CREATIVE COMMONS
100,000 images online, including 56,000 in public domain, from a collection of 300,000 objects
All high resolution images are held by Bridgeman images or DACS. There are currently 127,000 object records online, not all of which are illustrated by images.
Bildindex der Kunst & Architektur (Bildarchiv Foto Marburg)
Image index database for around 80 cultural and scientific institutions, with access to 3.9 million photographs, artworks and architectural objects.
Birmingham Museums Digital Image Resource
More than 6,000 available online from a collection of 800,000 objects.
British Library (Flickr Commons)
Digitised 65,000 books from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries from a collection of more than 13 million books.
Current online selection of 4.5 million images from the 8 million objects held by the museum.
BNF Gallica (Bibliotheque nationale de France)
Digital library of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The picture library has over one million images available.
43,000 images online from a collection of over 3 million.
The licencing service for European collections with 55 million digitised items.
74,000 images online from a collection of 500,000.
Getty Museum and Research Institute
115,000 images available through the Open Content Program
1,700 works available from a collection of 8,000
240,000 digitsed images from collections numbering over 250,000
The online collection includes 380,000 objects from holdings of 490,000
Over 400,000 images online of the 2 million objects in the collection
14,000 drawings online, representing works of art spanning the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries.
101,000 objects online from a collection of 200,000
National Gallery of Art, Washington
107,000 digital images are available, including 51,000 in open access, from a collection of 141,000
11,000 portrait paintings, 250,000 Photographs, 80,000 prints and drawings online
170,000 images digitised from a collection of 227,000
Collection of 700,000 works online. The collection illustrates the history of the Netherlands, from the Middle Ages to present.
7,300 objects offered with CC licences of the over 70,000 works of art in the collection across four sites: Modern, Britain and Liverpool and St. Ives.
Online catalogue currently represents 120,000 records from the Centre’s collection of 130,000 objects. 490,000 are available online. For records with no images, you can request digital files.
157,000 digitised images, including 148,000 in open access, from a collection of 250,000 objects representing Eastern and Western cultures
OTHER LICENCES
A repository of over 10 million fine art, history and photographic images
The Albertina holds over 1 million drawings and prints from the late Gothic to the present including works by Michelangelo, Dürer, Rembrant and Rubens.
Major agency for Italian art and architecture. Over 5 million photographs documenting the history of Italy from the mid 1800s to present.
3,000 images online from a collection of European art, best known for its collection of French 19th-century paintings.
BPK (Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz)
German agency for major museums, holds an archive of over twelve million photographs. More than 100 major museums and libraries are partners of the BPK.
International agency/focus on British art, with over three million images and videos in their collection.
More than 300,000 works of art from the Uffizi gallery.
Collection encompasses nearly 450,000 works of art from the Egyptian era to the present day.
Collection contains over 2,300 works paintings from c 1200 to the early 20th century
Includes collections of the following museums and galleries: Merseyside Maritime Museum, Museum of Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, World Museum, Lady Lever Art Gallery, International Slavery Museum. There are over 28,000 items from the collections available online.
Réunion des Musées Nationaux (RMN)
Includes most public art collections in France
Russian Public Collections (Link needed)
Includes the State Russian Museum, the premier collection of Russian Art from the 12th to the 20th centuries, and the State Tretyakov Gallery, with over 180,000 objects from the 18th to the 21st centuries.
Agency covering much of Italian art but also French/British, over 300,000 images representing works of art, architecture, landscapes, monuments, fashion & photography, history, anthropology and travel.
Vatican Library (manuscripts, drawings)
Over 80,000 manuscripts and drawings from the collection currently online.
Vatican Museums (paintings/sculpture)
Scala and Alinari (also not OA) offer some of the most famous works
About Creative Commons Licences
Creative Commons (CC) copyright licenses and tools forge a balance inside the traditional “all rights reserved” setting that copyright law creates. You can find more detailed information about each licence on Creative Commons website and by following individual ‘CC’ licence deed links below
Attribution | CC BY Licence Deed
Attribution-ShareAlike | CC BY-SA Licence Deed
Attribution-NoDerivs | CC BY-ND Licence Deed
Attribution-NonCommercial | CC BY-NC Licence Deed
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike | CC BY-NC-SA Licence Deed
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs | CC BY-NC-ND Licence Deed
There is a further Creative Commons licence (CC0) which allows allocating a work to the public domain by waiving all copyright and related rights. You can read more about the difference between CC0 and Public Domain attribution in the CC0 FAQ.
