Our pick of the best online collections of public domain images from the British Museum to NASA. Yours to use and modify as you like…
Jump straight to the museum collections
“Good artists copy, great artists steal.” A quote often attributed to Picasso turns out to have a suitably complicated history of copying and stealing itself.
Original ideas entered the endangered species list 3,000 years ago when King Solomon lamented: “What has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”
In his book Steal Like An Artist Austin Kleon asks: “How does an artist look at the world?” and concludes: “First, you figure out what’s worth stealing, then you move on to the next thing.”
So let’s cut ourselves some slack. We arrive on a planet full of history and wonder and other people’s stuff. It’s not just permissible to use what came before to create what’s next – it’s impossible not to.
Using Public Domain Images
This collection of websites offering free to use public domain images have been a fantastic resource for my own artwork be it drawing, painting, printmaking or design. A public domain image is one that is free of known copyright around the world. As the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 outlines: “You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.” Excellent news for artists.
UK Public Domain Law
An artwork falls in to the public domain 70 years after the death of the artist. That’s the general rule anyway, see this DACS factsheet for a list of exceptions. But wait! It’s possible that the photograph or reproduction of a public domain work might itself be under copyright! Thankfully the EU’s 2019 directive Copyright in the Digital Single Market, specifically Article 14, made it impossible to copyright “faithful reproductions of works in the public domain.” The UK has similar guidelines updated in 2021: “it seems unlikely that what is merely a retouched, digitised image of an older work can be considered as ‘original’”.
Fair Use for all other images
While I’ve tried to list only public domain images some websites have specific copyright conditions for certain images so be sure to double check copyright terms before using an image. If an image is protected under copyright you might still be able to use it (or elements of it) if your work aligns with fair use.
For a deeper dive on the subject Stephen Fishman’s The Public Domain: How to Find & Use Copyright-Free Writings, Music, Art & More comes highly rated.
My Top Site For Public Domain Images
Part of me wants to keep these wonderfully curated collections to myself but I’d be doing you a huge disservice. Aiming to “give everyone access to the best public domain creative resources” Raw Pixel scan and enhance high resolution images from antique books, plates and museum collections ensuring each image is 100% copyright free for personal or commercial use (CC0 license). There are bigger collections out there but none come close to matching their Apple-like ease of use and thoughtful design. Public Domain Gems is a good place to start while Artist Collections feature 20th century masters like Cézanne, Gaugin and Van Gogh or explore the Animal Kingdom via some incredible illustrations from the 19th century and beyond. Collage artists and scrapbooking enthusiasts, welcome to your new home.
Visit Raw Pixel’s Public Domain Images
And A Special Mention To…
Heritage Type Library’s public domain images might not have the breadth and depth of RawPixel’s offering but what they make up for in number they deliver in quality. Download hi-resolution vintage illustration packs from Jungle Animals, Butterflies and Fantastic Birds to Bicycles, Baseball and Skulls. What sets Heritage Type’s images apart from the competition is the the way each image has been carefully cut out with transparent backgrounds. It’s not often the case that images are cut out so cleanly and are ready to drop right in to your creative project. Each image can be used for personal or commercial work (CC0 license).
Visit Heritage Library Vintage Illustrations
Free Stock Images
Raw Pixel also host a large collection of free stock images you can use for personal or commercial work. Rounding off my top 3 recommendations for genuinely free stock photos are Pexels and Unsplash.
The Public Domain Review
Before moving on to the museum collections I have to mention The Public Domain Review. Truly a treasure trove of the weird and wonderful, sign up to their newsletter for a weekly dose of public domain highlights.
“You’ve got to realize that influence is not influence. It’s simply someone’s idea going through my new mind.”
—Jean-Michel Basquiat
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The Best Museum Collections
Ordered by the number of public domain images in each online collection.
Launched in February 2020, Smithsonian Open Access came late to the public domain party but was truly worth waiting for with over 2.8 million images – rising to 4.5 million in 2023 to become the world’s largest library of public domain images. Every image has a Creative Commons Zero license. In other words, knock yourself out – use the images however you want. No worries over attribution, selling your art or legal stuff. They’re all yours. Not only that, every image is available at high resolutions that are perfect for printing. Open Access has clearly been a labour of love from the Smithsonian team. Don’t miss over 2,000 interactive 3D models of everything from the Apollo 11 Command Module to a wooly mammoth skeleton. It’s intuitively easy to search, filter results, browse categories and unlike many other public domain collections it also works just as well on mobiles as it does on desktops. Bravo Smithsonian, this is wonderful.
Visit Smithsonian Open Access
Okay I’m slightly cheating here as Europeana collects data from thousands of European archives, libraries and museums (several of which are listed here) providing access to over 50 million digitised items from sound recordings to videos and texts. Over 2 million of those items are public domain images and Europeana’s search facility is an incredibly useful research tool. Browse curated art collections by topic, theme or genre and refine search results by image size, reuse rights, country, institution, colour etc. For example here’s a gallery of more than 8,000 free to use high resolution paintings. Europeana is an excellent portal for artists to source public domain images and a timely reminder of what can be achieved when European nations work together.
Visit Europeana Collections
I was hoping that something like Museo might come along and in 2021 it did. Museo is an open source visual search engine that connects directly to several of the best museum public domain libraries. 100% clutter free with just a search box that speedily delivers as many images as your internet connection can handle. Here’s a few random searches for a taster: horse, puppet, waves. Museums currently connected are Art Institute of Chicago (55,000 images), Rijksmuseum (716,000), Harvard Art Museums (236,000), and New York Public Library Digital Collection (901,000). Every image you find with Museo is in the public domain and completely free to use – thought it’s always worth a double check for any limitations before using for commercial work. Hats off to the developer and here’s to further collections being added. Museo’s a gem.
Visit Museo
The collections on Calisphere have been contributed by all ten campuses of the University of California and other important libraries, archives, and museums throughout California. Collections range from meticulous Indian Miniature Paintings to the incredibly unique costume design collection by UC Merced faculty member Dunya Ramicova. Calisphere is a collection of collections and the best way to get your head round it is to dive right in and enjoy the randomness of cool citrus fruit posters to British war posters.
Visit The Calisphere Collections
The V&A holds an amazing online collection – let down only by their strict-ish image usage restrictions. Like the British Museum their images can be used for certain non-commercial work but aren’t held in the public domain. If you can work around the license restrictions then you’ll find endless sources of inspiration among the cultural artefacts at the V&A. For example here’s over 500 images of beautifully designed Japanese Kimonos, a similar amount of slightly scary puppets or browse over 1,000 propaganda posters over the last century. The search is one of the fastest I’ve used and it’s easy to narrow down results using the sidebar on the left. The V&A also have a commercial arm at vandaimages.com.
Visit V&A Collections
In 2013 The British Library announced it was adding over a million free images to Flickr for anyone to ‘use, remix and repurpose’. It’s an awesome precedent to set and one many more museums and libraries would do well to follow. Many of the images are taken from 17th-19th century books and illuminated manuscripts but there’s lots outside of that too. Not sure where to start? Try out this selection of 430 images for a nice introduction of what’s available. It’s worth clicking just for this adorably drawn 19th century Tapir illustration.
Visit The British Library Collection
Over 2 million records (just over a million with images) but the usage rights are tricky. Most of the British Museum’s images are released under a Creative Commons 4.0 Share & Adapt licence so they aren’t 100% public domain images. You’re free to remix, transform, and build on them – in other words – make art. But I’m not entirely sure where that non-commercial use line gets drawn once you’ve transformed an image. Here’s their terms of use for reference and their commercial site is at bmimages.com. To get a high resolution version (2,500 pixels) sign up for a free account then send an order request via the ‘use image’ link under each image.
Visit The British Museum Collection
If you’re not careful you could easily lose whole days uncovering hidden gems in these fascinating collections. The best part is that almost all of it is available as copyright free high resolution tif files. You can either search by keyword or browse the collections from the homepage. Once inside a collection, select ‘View all’ and make sure to click the ‘Larger image available anywhere’ tickbox to show only images with high res versions to download. Highlights include hundreds of ghostly daguerreotypes and some wonderful air balloon and other vintage flying machine illustrations in the Tissandier Collection. But my favourite has to be this collection of free to use cat images.
Visit The Library of Congress Collection
The Rijksmuseum is the Dutch national museum based in Amsterdam. I used to work with a really tall Dutch guy called Taco. He was really smart, easy to work with and always got the job done. The Rijksmuseum’s online collection is like a digital version of Taco (if you swap height for range). Not only do they encourage artists to create new works using their images, they offer an annual prize for the best work created using Rijksstudio. It’s a joy to use and a wonderful resource for viewing other creative collections and gathering source material.
Visit Rijksmuseum Collection
If you love natural history museums then prepare to get lost down the enormous rabbit hole of the Yale Museum’s image collection. Have a look at these beautifully carved and adorned Kachinas for an example of the treasures you can find here. There are over 300 images of masks, over 150 shields and over 100 hand made canoes. Don’t miss the wonderfully weird Eskimo Dolls either. I haven’t even mentioned the many thousands of animal, plant and fossil images so stop reading this and start exploring!
Visit The Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History
Founded in 1870 The Met lives at 3 iconic New York City locations housing over 5,000 years of art from around the world. The Met’s online collection is as rich in pickings as its offline museums with over 280,000 images to draw from. Not all Met images are held in the public domain and only some of them are downloadable in high resolution. You’ll just have to dig around and see what you can unearth as the rewards are well worth the effort. I’d particularly recommend the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas section for some incredible cultural artifacts. The Musical Instruments collection is an equally impressive jumble of musical crafts and curiosities from around the world.
Visit The Met Collection
An image collection that’s long been a favourite of mine for gathering resource materials for artwork and collage. If you like animals, birds, bugs, plants, the oceans and everything in them then welcome to your new home for high-res copyright free images. The image collection is held on Flickr rather than their website with every image available for download under a Creative Commons license. Check out these vintage bird drawings from The natural history of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands collection for an idea of what’s inside. Follow BioDivLibrary on Twitter for obscure highlights and insights on the collection. Or browse all 11 categories from reptiles to fungi.
Visit The Biodiversity Heritage Library
The art gallery at Yale University houses some of the finest examples of art from ancient times through to modern and contemporary works. Like many other museum and gallery collections there’s no guarantee you can download a high resolution image of a work in its collection but you’re more liable to have success with older artworks. After searching for a few minutes I discovered a genre of art I’d never seen before – the Chinese art of Mandarin Squares from the Qing dynasty. Only a couple of these are available to download but it’s still given me a new area of inspiration to explore further. In one of the world’s great mysteries the Yale Art Gallery holds over 4,000 cat images yet contains a mere 160 dog pictures… the truth about cats and dogs continues to baffle.
Visit The Yale University Art Gallery
The Getty’s reasons for putting so many of their images into the public domain for free creative use is worth quoting directly: “The Getty adopted the Open Content Program because we recognized the need to share images of works of art for free and without restriction, so that all those who create or appreciate art—scholars, artists, art lovers, and entrepreneurs—will have greater access to high-quality digital images for their studies and projects. Art inspires us, and imagination and creativity lead to artistic expressions that expand knowledge and understanding. The Getty sincerely hopes that people will use the open content images for a wide range of activities and that they will share the fruits of their labors with others.” Indeed. Haunting photographs of life in 1870’s Scottish tenements highlight the richness of images available in the collection.
Visit The Getty Search Gateway
It’s no longer a secret that The Wellcome Collection is one of the best museums in London for fascinating exhibitions and mind bending stuff. Founded by Sir Henry Wellcome – pharmacist, entrepreneur, philanthropist and collector of more than a million objects which formed the basis of the collection in 1936. Describing itself as a ‘free visitor destination for the incurably curious’ their online image collection serves up a similar feast for the incurably curious among us. Fancy an image of The smallest medicine chest in the world balancing on a finger, it’s all yours. Five hundred year old drawing of a mechanical hand you say, at your service. The Wellcome Image Collection is a true Cabinet of Curiosities and our collective creativeness is all the better for it.
Visit Wellcome Images
David Rumsey started collecting maps over 30 years ago launching his website in the year 2000. Rumsey’s dream was to make his large private map collection accessible to everyone and we’re glad to say he’s done just that. The collection focuses on rare 16th through 21st century maps of North and South America, as well as maps of the World, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. From early 19th century celestial maps to quirky hand drawn maps of San Francisco the site truly is a wonder of curation and a precious gift to map lovers everywhere.
Visit The David Rumsey Map Collection
Yale holds the largest collection of British art outside the UK with over 70,000 images available to download and use for creative projects. Over 3,000 Turner paintings, prints and drawings are represented while Constable makes do with a mere couple of hundred masterpieces! Browse over 3,000 public domain images of horses in sculptural and painted forms by some of the best British artists in history from Sickert to Seymour.
Visit The Yale Center For British Art
One of my favourite cities is behind one of my favourite sites for public domain images. The site’s a joy to use with a simple and clean layout but the highlight is the high quality scans of the artworks. The colours and lighting are faithful to the original artwork and are some of the best I’ve seen from any museum image collection. When those artworks include impressionist and post impressionist heavyweights like Van Gogh, Seurat and Monet then you know you’re in good hands for high quality reproductions to use as you’d like for your own projects.
Visit The Art Institute of Chicago
The National Gallery Of Art was constructed by Andrew W. Mellon in 1937 in Washington, DC. NGA Images is their online collection of artwork with all images available free of charge for any use, commercial or non-commercial. Explore some wonderful Gauguin artworks, 130 Degas artworks of ballet dancers, horses and portraits then finish up with some of Cézanne’s drawings and studies.
Visit NGA Images
One of the most difficult parts of putting this post together is giving away the sites I want to keep secret so I can have all the best source material to myself! Just kidding I’m excited to share the LACMA image collection as it’s such a fantastic resource for creativity. One of my favourite collections is the 10,000-500 BC category featuring early art from all over the world. What’s not to love about this Iranian deer shaped vessel from 1350-800 B.C. or this Egyptian Figurine of the Goddess Bastet as a Cat from 1081 – 525 B.C. It’s a humbling experience to witness so many beautifully crafted artworks thousands of years before everything we think of as modern and advanced.
Visit Los Angeles County Museum of Art
NASA seriously delivers in this collection of photos from the Apollo space programme that ran from 1961–1972 and includes the not too small accomplishment of landing the first humans on the Moon. This collection from Apollo 11’s incredible mission captures that other worldly wonder the moon landings gave us all. For example you can download this iconic Buzz Aldrin photo in 4048 x 3968 high resolution to use for absolutely anything you want as NASA has generously placed it in the public domain.
Visit The Project Apollo Archive
From its public home on Flickr The Commons goal is to “share hidden treasures from the world’s public photography archives”. It’s an admirable ideal and one that could see The Commons rise to the top of the free image charts as more and more public orginisations contribute. The guiding principle for contributors is to ensure that images have “no known copyright restrictions” and are therefore able to be used freely within the public domain. Dozens of notable institutions are on board – view the entire list of contributing organistations or browse the whole collection at random. You could do worse for starters than viewing the collections of George Eastman House that range from the proverbial sublime (moon landings) to the ridiculous (giant pigs to stretchy contortionists!).
Visit Flickr: The Commons
The first thing I noticed about the Walters Collection is the care and attention they’ve put into photographing the artwork. Sculptures and art objects are expertly lit and captured in high resolution images that accentuate colour and form. The site is also one of the best designed and very user friendly with easy to download high res images. The Walters Art Museum is based in Baltimore, Maryland and its collection traverses the third millennium B.C. to the early 20th century. I enjoyed the Art of The Ancient Americas section especially this Mexican Female Performer With Drum. You can also search the collection using Tags with an A-Z of topics from birds to beards and tempera to terracotta.
Visit The Walters Collection
The Morgan Library & Museum is based in the heart of New York City. Their online collection contains a large selection of drawings and an impressive array of Rembrandt prints. Discover the intricately illustrated Prayer Book of Claude de France that can fit in the palm of your hand. There’s plenty more images to find but things can get more tricky to navigate with illustrated manuscripts such as The Crusader Bible demanding a trawl through a list of links with no image previews. The rewards can be worth it though with Gothic illustrations of the Days of Creation and Noah’s Ark.
Visit The Morgan Library & Museum Collection
I’ve saved one of the best free public domain images resources ’til last. It’s only got a few thousand images at the moment but it’s only going to keep getting better and better as more people contribute to the collection over time. Wikipedia’s criteria for inclusion sets the bar super high in terms of free license, high resolution, excellent image quality and detailed descriptions. How does this translate in real life? Check out The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch where you can download the original file at a staggering 30,000 × 17,078 pixels (file size: 222.86 MB). That’s high quality! Wikipedia Featured Pictures sets the standard for freely distributing public domain images and I hope many other sites follow their lead. The Paintings, Architecture and Outer Space sections are particularly worth bookmarking for future reference.
Visit Wikipedia Featured Pictures
Phew, let’s call it a day here eh! Hope you found this collection of public domain images helpful for making art and fuelling your creative projects. I’ll be coming back to use it myself for painting, drawing and collage source material. Please share the post on social media if you found it useful, appreciate it!