The online home for every public art collection in the UK. Art UK is a charity, and the website represents a collaboration between over 3,200 British institutions. Refine your search to images with open or Creative Commons licences.
1.3 million freely accessible images, videos, documents, and audio files from libraries, archives, and museums.
A searchable picture library containing images of the works held in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery collections. Out-of-copyright collections are freely available under a Creative Commons license.
47,000 publishing quality digital images of paintings, drawings, architecture and sculpture from The Courtauld Gallery and Conway Library are available for searching, rights clearance and download.
Over 10,000 images from the J Paul Getty museum, including paintings, photographs, sketchbooks and prints. All the open content images are available to be used without permission.
For over 100 years, the UK Government Art Collection has collected works of art to promote British art and artists. Explore over 11,000 images from the Collection here.
Search thousands of artworks from New York's metropolitan museum. Some of these are freely available for scholarly use: look for the OASC symbol underneath each image.
Search the National Gallery's entire collection. Low-resolution images available to download with information on licensing and non-commercial Creative Commons use.
Over 35,000 open access digital images from the collections of the US National Gallery of Art.
Explore 160,000 portraits from the 16th Century to the present day. Free downloads available for academic use (click 'use this image' on any image for details).
Search and download over 400,000 images from the museum's collections.
Search the collections of all the Tate museums, covering British Art from 1500-present, together with international modern art. Images are available to download in low-resolution a under Creative Commons license.
Over 140,000 images from a wide range of collections, including paintings, photographs, posters and artefacts across many themes. The images are copyright cleared for UK higher educational use.
Search for thousands of images and other works from the gallery's collections.
Aims to show the entire UK national collection of oil paintings, the stories behind the paintings, and where to see them for real. It is made up of paintings from thousands of museums and other public institutions around the country.
Other Useful Art Resources
Sir John Beazley's archive, a classical art research centre containing images from classical art, including pottery, sculpture and inscriptions, and a dictionary.
The world's most comprehensive bibliography of scholarly writing about the history of western art. Includes articles from over 1,200 journals. New content is no longer added.
Nearly 3,000 recordings of interviews with British artists and designers.
Links to useful art history resources from the Getty Institute, including digitised texts, collection inventories, research guides and over 10,000 free-to-use images.
3000 digitised images from Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery's Pre-Raphaelite collection, including sketches, paintings, engravings, tapestries, stained glass, ceramics and fine art objects. Also includes themed essays.
Searchable archive of the RA collection, including books, digitised art works and rare exhibition catalogues. The library and archive form one of the most significant resources for the study of British art from 1760 onwards.
Multimedia art history resource.
Search or browse a selection of the Tate's archival material (letters, sketchbooks, photographs etc.) relating to British art and artists. Many are CC licensed.
Online collection of all surviving letters written and received by Van Gogh. Includes facsimiles, text, translations, sketches, notes and other resources.
Search the holdings of the largest collection of British art outside the UK, with 47,000 records from the Elizabethan period to the present. All the painting and sculpture images are available online.
ART-Dok
Journal articles on art history. Much German content as well as articles in English.
Asian Art Newspaper
Only limited selection of articles free online, but nevertheless a good source of information about Asian art.
Blue Mountain Project
European avant-garde journals from 1848 to 1923, digitised for online reading and viewing.
British Art History Resources
Links to free resources, compiled by the Walpole Society.
Courtauld Books Online
Small collection of art history books.
Dissertations and theses
Global Electronic Theses and Dissertations Search is a search engine for finding free online versions of theses and dissertations from around the world, at both master's and doctoral level. PQDT Open is a smaller collection, with no content not found in Global ETD, but can be easier to search for some topics.
EThOS offers doctoral theses (dissertations) from UK universities, and other degree-awarding institutions in the UK. When searching, check the box Limit search to items available for immediate download... for material you can read on your laptop or other device.
Getty Publications
Art history and art conservation books published by the Getty Institute.
Getty Research Portal
A collection of older works: over 30,000 art history publications, rare books, and related literature, from many publishers.
Google Books
Good for older works that are out of copyright. Also offers brief extracts, cover images and contents pages for newer titles which are not offered full-text.
Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
Essays, images and chronologies, together providing a grand overview of the history of art, worldwide. Created by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Metropolitan Museum of Art: several different collections of e-books. Most are accessed via the Digital Collections, including all known Met publications from 1869-1939, rare art books, and historic sales catalogues. 400 Met publications from 1964 onwards.
MoMA exhibitions database
Images and documentation from the New York Museum of Modern Art exhibitions from 1929 onwards.
Modernist Journals Project
Online reproductions of early modernist journals. 27 titles have been digitised as of 2015.
Watercolour World
Database of documentary watercolours from before 1900