
Nearly 1,000 Paintings and Drawings by Vincent van Gogh Digitized and Put Online - leephillips
http://www.openculture.com/2018/07/nearly-1000-paintings-drawings-vincent-van-gogh-now-digitized-put-online-view-download-collection.html
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AceJohnny2
Van Gogh has a special meaning for me, because it's the first time I was
fascinated with a painting.

To put things into context: my mom is an art historian, and when I was a kid
she'd regularly drag me to museums. I remember being bored out of my mind,
with only the cool architecture of the museums themselves to mildly entertain
me.

To this day I'm pretty uninterested in the classics

Years later, in my late 20s, I went to the National Gallery in London, and saw
one of Van Gogh's "Wheatfield with Cypresses" [1] there, and for the first
time a classical painting struck me as beautiful. Maybe it's the pastels,
maybe it was the texture of the gouache (which no digital picture reproduces,
you'd need a detailed 3D model), I just stood there entranced by this
painting.

I bought a (stupidly overpriced) print of it at the gift shop, and to this day
it's still the only classical painting I can recognize a love for.

Sadly, that particular painting isn't part of this digitized collection, since
the collection is from the Amsterdam Museum, not from London's National
Gallery.

[1] [https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/vincent-van-
gog...](https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/vincent-van-gogh-a-
wheatfield-with-cypresses)

~~~
stephenhuey
I never appreciated Van Gogh very much until I saw his large mesmerizing
paintings in person at the museum in Amsterdam.

~~~
dekhn
Me too! I was blown away by the 3d structure of the paint on the canvas.
Completely changed my appreciation for the work.

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robin_reala
As nice as this is, it would have been even better if they’d used an
understandable CC licence instead of the custom non-commercial sub-A4 one
they’ve decided on. There are at least a couple of museums now that have
licenced their entire digital artworks as CC0[1][2], and I’ve been talking to
Munchmuseet in Oslo recently who are planning to licence their entire new
digitised collection[3] as CC4 (free use with attribution).

It’s important for me as I need PD (or CC0, which is functionally equivalent)
to pick decent cover art for Standard Ebooks[4] works. As it is we usually
spend hours hunting through pre-1923 art books on Hathi for the perfect piece,
and CC0 collections make that much much easier.

[1]
[https://metmuseum.org/art/collection/](https://metmuseum.org/art/collection/)

[2]
[https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio](https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio)

[3] [http://munch.emuseum.com/](http://munch.emuseum.com/)

[4] [https://standardebooks.org/](https://standardebooks.org/)

~~~
Confiks
I really don't understand your comment, and all subsequent responses along the
same line. The digitized van Gogh paintings are perfect copies of the original
public domain works. For the US, Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. [1]
makes it perfectly clear that the images are not protected by copyright, and
there is similar law and legislation in Europe.

What do you mean with the ability of the museums to choose a license for the
paintings, and what is the "sub-A4" license you refer to?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp).

~~~
robin_reala
I believe the problem lies in the wording of ‘exact’. Without a direct
comparison to the source material ‘exact’ could be challenged. There’s also
the problem of exact dating of a piece of art as being pre-1923. With a
reproduction in a published book you have a publishing date in the colophon
that logically must be the same year or later than the reproduction of the
artwork inside. Without that you’re relying on the artist’s date of death or
supporting material such as an original bill of sale to make the distinction.

Basically, the problem is that when you’re releasing a derivative work with
CC0 you need to be 100% sure that your original licensing is correct. We’re
probably being overly-cautious, but luckily the imprint style allows us to be.

(The A4 licence comes from their T&Cs PDF: “Images of the Van Gogh Museum
collection up to and including A4 size in TIF format may be downloaded and
distributed for non-commercial use”.)

~~~
biztos
What if I download an "A4" and distribute an "A3" with exactly the same
pixels?

~~~
robin_reala
No idea, and that’s the problem: the licence is badly defined. Ideally they
would have used one of the pre-existing CC licences that people already
understand.

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rococode
Woah. In an ML class I took last fall we got to design our own classification
challenge problems that the entire class then competed on.

The one our group made used this exact dataset (the museum website)! We called
it VANGOGHORNO haha. We basically pulled the images from the collection and
mixed them with non-Van Gogh paintings. It was surprisingly a very learnable
dataset, the top two teams got around 97% accuracy and many teams got to 90%.
We resized the images and included paintings from vaguely similar styles like
impressionism so we were surprised people did that well. I think the top team
used some kind of transfer learning to identify entities in the paintings and
learned from that.

~~~
ArcticCelt
Is there some downloadable archive file of all painting in the higher
resolution or did you simply roll your own web scraper?

~~~
bnegreve
In case you're looking for supervised art datasets for machine learning, I
made a little art-movement classifier you may be interested in.

Demo here: [https://bit.ly/2xClNHz](https://bit.ly/2xClNHz)

data and models are available for download.

You can also have a look at art500k which is essentially the same thing.
[http://smedia.ust.hk/james/projects/deepart_ana.html](http://smedia.ust.hk/james/projects/deepart_ana.html)

Their dataset is also available for download.

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jaspervdj
Slightly off-topic, a big part of seeing a painting in real life is seeing the
structure and layers of brush strokes. It's a long shot but does anyone know
if any work has been done to create depth maps of paintings and possibly
combine them with scans?

~~~
hiccuphippo
That would be a cool use case for VR headsets.

~~~
theoh
It would also be The End for physical museums. If the appearance of the
painting (the "frontal" lightfield under optimal illumination) has been
recorded and securely stored... the physical substance of the painting becomes
something that is only maintained for sentimental reasons. It's a basic
premise of science and engineering that, if you have the recipe, you don't
need the artifact. See Walter Benjamin etc on the idea that the original has
an "aura" that can't be cloned. Of course it is nonsense, but it foresees the
condition of mind-scanning and conversion into digital selves. There's no way
any one of us currently alive will exist, consciously, in an electronic
system. There's no way to transfer consciousness from the biological to the
electronic substrate, though one can dream (as Greg Egan has) of shifting a
conscious brain from one system to another.

In brief, human consciousness and artistic judgement isn't going away, for a
couple of centuries at least.

~~~
red75prime
> There's no way to transfer consciousness from the biological to the
> electronic substrate

Transferring? You are thinking small. What about expanding beyond your brain,
so that it becomes a small part of a whole and by the time it starts failing
it's just a peripheral input preprocessing device/local motion
planner/unreliable redundant memory storage/small vote in global decision
making and not you.

The possibility is still pretty far. Reliable biocompatible high throughput
brain computer interfaces aren't there yet.

~~~
Jamerson
How about slowly replacing brain cells with synthetic ones while maintaining
the consciousness in place?

~~~
red75prime
Technical difficulties will be much greater. The brain is still a single point
of failure. The "expansion" approach allows gradual increase of intelligence
thru intermediate exocortex stage, boosting the progress, while studying which
information processes/something else corresponds to conscious subjective
experiences, paving the way for relocation of consciousness locus outside of
the brain or resorting to other measures in a case of impossibility.

------
ryaneager
Script to download full sized images:
[https://gist.github.com/RyanEager/a747215c259ffecb9beb1dfec0...](https://gist.github.com/RyanEager/a747215c259ffecb9beb1dfec00e9d00)

~~~
zokier
Please do not abuse these sort of services. Sure, downloading one-offs for
legitimate personal use is fine (in my opinion) but please be reasonable and
avoid discouraging them of publishing more stuff or even locking down the
existing collections more down.

Sure I understand it's bit annoying that they do not provide the higher
resolution as downloads, and that they don't have more liberal license. But it
is still pretty nice service and reasonably well done imo. This could be the
baby steps for more open collections, but egregious abuse probably will not
help in getting them into right direction.

~~~
hiccuphippo
Someone could offer a torrent file or ipfs hash to the files so other people
don't have to hug their bandwidth to death.

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zokier
I wonder how they are colormanaging these? I sure hope only the web versions
are (presumably) sRGB, and they have wide-gamut versions for other uses,
especially for their prints. I imagine they do, they are professionals after-
all, and the collection and digitization overall seems pretty well done.

------
archagon
If anyone's interested, I made a set of apps that turns your macOS desktop
into a rotating art gallery, given an existing directory of images. It's all
done in a completely native way, so you don't have to worry about weird
software interactions or future compatibility:
[http://archagon.net/blog/2018/05/02/a-native-art-gallery-
for...](http://archagon.net/blog/2018/05/02/a-native-art-gallery-for-your-
mac/)

Anyway, I'm looking forward to throwing this batch in there. Hope somebody
sticks them all in a torrent soon.

------
protonimitate
This is quite an amazing collection, and great for archiving purposes.

But, (I can't help myself), I am conflicted about the digitization of
museums/artists/artworks. Seeing a work of art, let alone one of the greats,
is something that should be experienced in person. Reducing it to pixels for
instant digestion is a sub-optimal way to experience it.

Granted, this is amazing to research and exposure, and for distribution to
those who wouldn't normally be able to see it - but I fear that it takes
something away from the art.

If you are involved in the contemporary art scene at all, you may have noticed
that works are beginning to become 'instagram' friendly - from paintings that
look good on the internet but are ultimately shallow, 'installations' that
generate a lot of hype and look good on your Story (a la Infinity Mirrors
[0]), to hordes of people taking selfies with the Mona Lisa instead of
appreciating it [1].

Maybe that's just the way things will progress in the Art world. But, imo, it
is more important than ever to appreciate and continue creating the physical,
tangible, beauty of art in an ever increasing digital world.

[0][http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-kusama-
mi...](http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-kusama-mirrors-
broad-20171031-htmlstory.html)

[1][https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/27/arts/design/mona-lisa-
ins...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/27/arts/design/mona-lisa-instagram-
art.html)

~~~
olavk
I kind of disagree - many paintings are actually better experienced on print
or online than in real life. Just take your example of Mona Lisa - you will
get a better impression of the art from a good reproduction than from watching
it behind glass surrounded by hordes of tourists at the Louvre. It is a
relatively small painting and you can't even get close! Many classic paintings
are awkwardly placed with bad lighting and so on. Some museums hang paintings
in multiple rows, so you have to be a giraffe to enjoy half of them.
Digitalization on the other hand is typically done under perfect light and
viewing conditions.

In any case, for most ordinary people it is totally unrealistic to travel to
museums all over the world to enjoy the real paintings.

~~~
protonimitate
Fair enough.

To be honest, I have issues with the Museum/Gallery institution as it exists,
but that's another story altogether.

My bigger point, which maybe wasn't clear from my post, is that Art is one of
the greatest ways to express humanity, and by digitizing and industrializing,
we will lose some of that human aspect.

>>In any case, for most ordinary people it is totally unrealistic to travel to
museums all over the world to enjoy the real paintings.

Agreed. And I don't think that we should idolize the great works as much as we
do. I strongly encourage a more local appreciation for artists who are
currently creating ;)

~~~
bigiain
I have a similar viewpoint - in that personally I consider seeing original art
locally, even though it isn't a Van Gogh or a Da Vinci or whatever, is
worthwhile anyway. At the same time, digitisations or reproductions of
"famous" works can still be rewarding.

Same with music, while recordings of Coltrane or Miles (or 50Cent or The Sex
Pistols or Beyoncé, substitute whatever your musical tastes encompass) are
great - it's still also great to go and see local live acs - who're
potentially awful - but are often surprisingly enjoyable.

------
Dowwie
I highly recommend the movie "Loving Vincent". It is a paint-animated film
about part of Van Gogh's life.

~~~
Regardsyjc
I also recommend Van Gogh: Painted with Words, a BBC biopic starring Benedict
Cumberbatch who acts and narrates Van Gogh's letters.

If you like Doctor Who, there's an episode on Van Gogh with Bill Nighy that's
sweet and sci-fi silly but they have an incredible scene where they animate
one of Van Gogh's paintings. Sort of like the 360 degree VR animation of
Starry Sky that is floating around Facebook.

------
ericdykstra
Slightly off-topic, but does anyone here have experience buying reproduction
prints of public domain works online? I've been meaning to get a print of a
Pieter Claesz piece, but with so many different websites and options I've
succumb to analysis paralysis. Any tips?

~~~
iamben
Only done it once, but I downloaded a HQ version of the picture I wanted and
had it printed at a local printer. Was super high quality paper and good ink.
Cost me about £7/$10 for a decent size, and I grabbed a frame off Amazon.

------
epberry
Some of his more famous paintings like Starry Night and Wheatfield with
Cypresses aren't here. I guess I'll have to settle for Wheatfield with Crows!
The sketches are fantastic tho - you have to scroll quite a ways to get to
them but they are worth it.

~~~
a_d
There is a hi-res version of starry night, if you admire that painting here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Van_Gogh_-
_Starry_Night_-...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Van_Gogh_-
_Starry_Night_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)

It is 30,000 × 23,756 pixels (file size: 205.1 MB) .

While incomparable to seeing it up close, a lot of brush details can be seen
up close. If there was such as thing as a favorite jpg, for me this is it! :-)

~~~
briandear
It’s spectacular on a 5k monitor! Thanks for sharing.

------
kbumsik
What I like about his artworks is the rough texture of his oil painting. I
mean, these paintings are not just 2D pictures and their 3D aspects (e.g.
texture and depth of the paint) tell much more. I hope digitization technology
would be improved.

------
nemo1618
Don't mind me, just sharing my favorite Van Gogh self portrait:
[https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0016V1962](https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0016V1962)

The long, aligned strokes give the painting a feeling of motion and gravity,
like bits of ferrous metal revealing a magnetic field. And the fact he put
_green_ in his beard -- and pulled it off flawlessly -- never ceases to amaze
me. It's almost psychedelic.

~~~
Jamerson
Do all these seem low contrast? I find it hard to believe that he painted down
in value like this constantly. He'd have to mix every color with grey. It
seems much more likely to be a weird photography setup.

------
bookofjoe
Oh, but I long for visiting this and other museums in VR. Real soon now, I
guess.

~~~
andybak
There have been several small attempts but no coherent joined up effort.

I really hope some galleries are digitising their collections via 3D scanning.
Viewing something like a Van Gogh in VR without some real texture and depth is
not convincing. Some of that paint is 5mm off the canvas. You can see that
from a fair distance.

~~~
zokier
It is nice that these pictures now are pretty high resolution, so you can
actually see quite a lot of the texture even if it is just 2d. Sure it is
nothing compared to physical painting, but compared to your average low-res
pictures it still feels like a significant step up.

------
renierbotha
Here's a simple scraper to download the entire collection:

[https://github.com/Rendiere/vanScrape](https://github.com/Rendiere/vanScrape)

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candiodari
Gentlemen, fire up your style transfer networks !

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majortennis
I counted like 10

~~~
garfij
There are more than 10 on just the first page of search results, so I'm not
sure how you're counting
[https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/search/collection?q=&artist=...](https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/search/collection?q=&artist=Vincent%20van%20Gogh&pagesize=105)

