
Show HN: Download Hi-Res Public Domain Art, Posters and Illustrations - therecb
https://artvee.com/
======
simonsarris
This is great and I'd be happy to add it to my list of High Quality
Collections of Digitized Art and Archival Finds[1], where I catalog sites like
these, but where are the images coming from? There seems to be no information.

For example for the American artist Charles Courtney Curran, Artvee has three:
[https://artvee.com/artist/charles-courtney-
curran/](https://artvee.com/artist/charles-courtney-curran/)

This is more than NY Public Library with only one:
[https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/search/index?utf8=%E2%9C...](https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/search/index?utf8=%E2%9C%93&keywords=Charles+Courtney+Curran)

And the Art institute of Chicago, with also only one:
[https://www.artic.edu/artists/5703/charles-courtney-
curran](https://www.artic.edu/artists/5703/charles-courtney-curran)

(note there are no duplicates among these galleries!)

And the National Gallery, with zero: [https://www.nga.gov/collection-search-
result.html?artist=Cha...](https://www.nga.gov/collection-search-
result.html?artist=Charles%20Curran)

And the Smithsonian, which has none of the above but does have his
photomechanical prints:
[https://www.si.edu/search?edan_q=charles%2Bcourtney%2Bcurran...](https://www.si.edu/search?edan_q=charles%2Bcourtney%2Bcurran&)

Wikipedia, by the way, has several not seen in any of the above. So I'd like
to know where you are sourcing these.

[1] [https://simonsarris.com/art-collections](https://simonsarris.com/art-
collections)

~~~
therecb
The images are sourced from museums and libraries with open access policies
all over the world. We are currently working on adding sources, locations and
other metadata to all the images as well as an API.

~~~
Tokeflote
I love the fact that you aggregate only the art work from world museums. I was
looking for a site that I could browse such work. I did book mark your site.

Some feedback if you'd like - the infinite scroll is a bad browsing experience
when used for huge amount of work: \- picture loading starts slowing down when
scrolling too much. \- when a reach a point I cannot save my browsing process.
For example I browsed the Abstract category. There are so many works that I
can't possibly see them all in one sitting. Next time when I sit to browse I
can't continue from where I have reached.

My use case for your site would be to find good wallpapers for my PC. Apart
for the browsing experience it would be nice to be able to filter images based
on resolution or aspect ratio so that I can find wallpapers. You mentioned you
are making an API so maybe that could solve that.

Art needs to be seen and the best place for me to see is on my desktop
wallpaper :)

------
shmulkey18
Really nice. Does anyone have a recommendation for a service which print such
images as posters at a reasonable price?

~~~
chrischen
For prints Costco and Walmart have some crazy low prices and they often
advertise them as archival quality as well.

~~~
CharlesW
FYI, you can get ICC profiles fo Costco printers and papers as well.

Here's listing for California Costcos:
[https://www.drycreekphoto.com/icc/Profiles/California_profil...](https://www.drycreekphoto.com/icc/Profiles/California_profiles.htm#CA)

Instructions:
[https://www.drycreekphoto.com/icc/CostcoPosterPrinters.html](https://www.drycreekphoto.com/icc/CostcoPosterPrinters.html)

------
rememberlenny
Some of my favorite posters are open source NASA posters.

Find them here:
[https://artvee.com/?s=nasa&post_type=product&product_cat=0](https://artvee.com/?s=nasa&post_type=product&product_cat=0)

~~~
marc_io
NASA's direct link to the entire collection:
[https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/visions-of-the-
future/](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/visions-of-the-future/)

------
narrationbox
Do you have an API? (See Pexels and Unsplash if you need inspiration) Would be
really useful for wallpaper changing scripts.

~~~
chrischen
Though the content is free, having all public domain art amassed is a useful
service and I too would like an API. I'd even pay for it!

------
layoutIfNeeded
Something isn't right with the resolutions:

    
    
       Standard, 1164 x 2400px
       JPG, Size: 3.55 MB, 300dpi
    
       Max Size, 1940 x 4000px
       JPG, Size: 9.63 MB, 300dpi
    

They can't be both 300dpi (unless your dpi settings doesn't have anything to
do with the physical size of the original artwork, in which case why bother
with dpi settings at all?).

~~~
blacksmith_tb
One possibility is that the level of compression is different in the two jpgs,
that could account for a lot of filesize difference. But really dpi doesn't
mean much when you know the pixel dimesnions[1].

1: [http://www.pacenterforphotography.org/2018/08/dpi-ppi-are-
me...](http://www.pacenterforphotography.org/2018/08/dpi-ppi-are-meaningless-
in-the-digital-world/)

------
jamil7
Cool project and the site design is really nice. It seems a little slow for me
though, it might just be getting hit by HN right now.

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Tarsul
Wow, fantastic website! Would be perfect if the filenames of the pictures had
the name of the picture + author in it.

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mattbk1
If you want more art in your life in general, please see the Twitter bots from
[https://twitter.com/andreitr](https://twitter.com/andreitr).

(I've tried to get him onto Mastodon/Fediverse as well, but he's looking for
the right instance.)

~~~
zimpenfish
[https://botsin.space/about/more](https://botsin.space/about/more) might be
worth a look since it's primarily for Fediverse bots.

~~~
mattbk1
I've suggested that to him. I have a few bots there myself :-)

------
mattkevan
Amazing site, thanks for sharing.

Love the design and I really look forward to exploring once the HN hug of
death has subsided.

As someone who’s spent a long and frustrating time exploring various open
access art databases, I admire your persistence and patience in putting so
much quality art together.

------
kixiQu
This is perhaps more reasonable for the community to troubleshoot, but do you
know why there's no thumbnail showing up for tools like
[https://iframely.com/](https://iframely.com/) ? Over on lemmy I'd like to
post more of these but the preview isn't working.
[https://dev.lemmy.ml/c/artworks](https://dev.lemmy.ml/c/artworks) I rate
about a 0.1/10 at front-end knowledge so I poked a bit but couldn't quite
figure it out.

------
spiffyman
Very nice! Is there a way to provide feedback on a given item? For example,
this[1] seems to have a typo in the title (and thus the URL).

I'm sure you've already thought of this, but it's pretty easy to see how to
monetize this by affiliate-linking out to a print/frame provider.

[1]: [https://artvee.com/dl/valles-mariners/](https://artvee.com/dl/valles-
mariners/)

------
pugworthy
It is not "...Paintings, Drawings and Illustrations from some of the best
artists the world has ever known", unless you believe this primarily applies
to Euro/Western art.

E.g., Utagawa Hiroshige, the Japanese ukiyo-e artist who is "considered the
last great master of that tradition" has just one entry.

~~~
pugworthy
You're welcome to vote me down for pointing out cultural bias, but I don't
think you should deny it or gloss over it with your downvote. Especially at
this time.

------
bleubleunoir
I found a download link error at [https://artvee.com/dl/ault-and-wiborg-
ad-008/](https://artvee.com/dl/ault-and-wiborg-ad-008/) The download links
point to a very different image, couldn't figure out why.

------
terrycody
By simply google a bit, found another website (not mine):

[https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/hledej.php?hleda=art](https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/hledej.php?hleda=art)

No idea if there are other good sites like artvee, good job done!

------
galacticdessert
Wonderful!

The Dietmar Winkler’s MIT Posters are a nice discovery ->
[https://artvee.com/collection/dietmar-winklers-mit-
posters/](https://artvee.com/collection/dietmar-winklers-mit-posters/)

------
Lorin
Wish I could search by artist's region. Eg. Canada, Japan, etc.

------
zhoujianfu
Nice!

You could order framed prints of these via YC company levelframes.com... they
won’t do copyrighted stuff but since this is all public domain... perfect!

------
mdoms
This is really, really nice but unfortunately the website is too slow to be
usable right now.

------
julianeon
This is great, thanks.

Incidentally, for people who are looking for an image to illustrate your
article, something beyond the usual suspects of guy at open office or girl w
laptop and plant, I like embedded pins from Pinterest. Very easily
discoverable and you can find plenty that's unique there.

But for a while at least, I may switch to using these images.

------
saberworks
The art is beautiful and the site is nice. I love the size of the thumbnails!

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ngold
Public domain media, is the best kind. Looks like a great art resource.

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lerie1982
royal collection trust, [https://www.rct.uk/](https://www.rct.uk/)

------
muhammadusman
wow, this is great! thanks for making this

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amineazariz
The website itself is a work of art.

------
worik
"Discover Classical Art" it said.

I entered "porn" in the search box

I got nothing.

Puzzled...

~~~
082349872349872
Try "Zeus" or "Jupiter" for ancient furry. Also, rich renaissance italians
didn't just invite dates upstairs to see their etchings, they had statuary.

A plausible theory explaining:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suburban_Baths_(Pompeii)#Eroti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suburban_Baths_\(Pompeii\)#Erotic_art_in_the_Suburban_Baths)
is that, just like modern parking garages are often colour coded, "you're
unlikely to forget where you left your street clothes with those murals".

