6: Old Art

I tried a number of search terms before finally settling on “impressionism” for today’s blog post. Since things that have an expired copyright are easy to find in the public domain, I figured that 19th century art was my best bet.

And indeed, I did find some beautiful examples of art. Take, for instance, this:

“Impressionism” by Paul Albertella is licensed under CC BY 2.0

I also got a lot of pictures of plaques for art, without the actual art itself. Really, I was surprised that the first page didn’t show…you know, more famous paintings by dead people. Claude Monet? Alfred Sisley? Pierre Auguste-Renoir? ANYBODY?

Part of the problem seems to be that the CreativeCommons search doesn’t implicitly know what you want. Or maybe, unlike search engines like Google, it just doesn’t make assumptions. If I search for creative commons impressionism images on Google–and indeed, there is a search option that allows you to do so–it will automatically assume that I’m looking for big names. See below:

I realize in hindsight that my screenshot has “labeled for non-commercial reuse” as the setting. I just checked “labeled for reuse”, though, and it essentially shows the same images with just a few variations.

I guess the fact that CreativeCommons kind of just shows you whatever is…refreshing. It’s certainly a little inconvenient, though, too. I suppose it all depends on what you’re looking for.

I found that if I went back and searched specific artists’ names, I did find a pretty good selection of art. Here’s Alfred Sisley, who doesn’t get enough love as an impressionist since his name doesn’t sound like “Monet”:

“Le Jour ni l’Heure 5794 : Alfred Sisley, 1839-1899, L’Inondation à Port-Marly, 1878, musée d’Orsay, Paris, jeudi 14 mai 2015, 20:06:59” by Renaud Camus is licensed under CC BY 2.0
“Allée of Chestnut Trees” by Alfred Sisley (British, Paris 1839–1899 Moret-sur-Loing) via The Metropolitan Museum of Art is licensed under CC0 1.0
“Alfred Sisley – Garden Path in Louveciennes” by Irina is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Let’s all give Alfred Sisley some love.

Of course, there aren’t endless results–I think I only got one page–but it’s a step in the right direction. Still, I’m not sure I’m a huge fan of this search function. I’m fairly certain there are other sites online that provide similar information while at the same time giving you more control over you search options. Or maybe not, in which case, you go Glen CreCo.

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