Public domain art is just that. Public. That means that anyone can download it, repackage it and turn around and sell it to you without ever telling you they got it for free to start with.
That is how every single Etsy vintage art seller works. They scour public domain archives for free art downloads, upload them to etsy and then sell the same file they got for free to you.
But it’s not just small Etsy shops doing this. Big brands like Anthropologie and CB2 do this as well. And in those instances, you’re often paying hundreds of dollars for what amounts to a free art download printed on decent paper and some nice custom framing.
Is there anything wrong with that? Not necessarily. Some people don’t want to go through the hassle of finding public domain art, printing it and figuring out how to frame it.
However, I want YOU TO KNOW what you’re paying for. I want you to have THE OPTION to download the print FOR FREE from the public domain instead if you want to.
So before you spend hundreds of your hard-earned dollars on that artwork an influencer told you to buy, here’s how to check if it’s actually in the public domain and FREE to download and print for yourself!
How to Use Reverse Image Search to Find Free Art Online
I’ve written about public domain art extensively in the past, but I’ve never broken down my process for checking if a piece of art is in the public domain! This is the exact step-by-step process I use anytime I see something I’m curious about adding to my Public Domain Print Shop collection of free art downloads.
1. Take A Screen Shot Of The Art
After you’ve located the art you want to search for (like this best selling work of art from Stoffer Home currently available for $495), the first step in this process is getting a decent screen shot of the artwork a website is selling.
Try to get it without the frame, you just want to screenshot the art itself.
TECH NOTE: Not sure how to take a screenshot? This is a great article breaking down how to do it on just about any device!
2. Perform A Reverse Image Search
There are many search engines that do this but I have found that tineye.com reliably returns the best results. But if you strike out on one, it’s worth also trying a Google image search, and a Bing image search as well. I’ve found that they all tend to give you different results.
3. Find The Name Of The Artist & Title Of The Painting
I find that 9 times out of ten the reverse image search still pulls up websites trying to sell that same work of art to me. However, you will often get a result from a stock image website like Alamy.com that actually lists the name of the artist and the title of the work of art. This is what we need to keep moving forward in the process, so try poking around in the search results until you locate these two things.
4. Plug The Artist’s Name & Title Of The Painting Into A Google Search
After you’ve gotten the artist’s name and title of the work of art, you can plug them into a google search and usually get more helpful results that include things like public domain archives that house the images such as:
- The Museum or Archive Where That Artwork Lives
- Wikimedia Commons: A Public Domain Archive
Those are the two big ones I look for and can usually find on the first page of a quick google search if a work of art is in fact in the public domain.
SEARCH NOTE: For this particular work of art, the museum didn’t currently have the image available for free download (most of the time they will), however the artwork was available on wikimedia commons.
(You can see it’s also hosted on my website for free as well, but that won’t always be the case for every image lol)
5. Go To A Public Domain Archive & Download Your Image
The last step of this process is to simply click through to one of the public domain archives that house the image you are interested in and download it for free.
As you saw in the search results, I actually host this artwork as a free printable download as part of my Public Domain Print Shop collection. You can snag it here! You can also find the full collection of Ernest Haskell’s tree etchings in my Drawings & Illustrations Gallery here too if you want the full set!
6. Print Your Free Art
Now that you have your free art public domain art download, all that’s left is to print and frame it!
If you want to know how big you can print that art you just downloaded, I have a blog post all about that HERE.
Want to know where to print that art you just downloaded? Check out this blog post.
7. Want Me To Talk You Through The Process?
If this process seems a little confusing, I have a full video walkthrough of the process in a highlight on my instagram page! Head over there to watch all the story slides where I break down this same process step-by-step in video form.
More Examples Of Expensive Art That Is Actually Free
If you think this is limited just to Stoffer Home here are a few other examples I found of public domain art being sold from big brands. To find the source for each of these works of art, I simply went through all the step I just broke down above:
CB2
In this example you can see that CB2 downloaded the original art from The Rijksmuseum public domain collection here for free. Cropped the original image. Added a contrast and saturation adjustment to the file. Framed it and then listed the free download for $899.
However, I do want to give a shout out to CB2 for actually listing the name of the artist and the original title of this artwork under the “Details” tab for this product listing.
Anthropologie
Here we again see that Anthropologie took an image they sourced from The Rijksmuseum here for free. Rotated the image to be vertical instead of horizontal. Did some levels adjustments to the image file and then listed it framed for $758.
Credit to them for also listing the original artist and name of the artwork under the “Product Details” tab for this product listing.
Serena & Lily
This is a great example of ways companies make figuring out if an image is actually in the public domain a bit harder.
As you can see the artwork that Serena & Lily is selling is flipped the opposite direction from the original illustration I tracked down. The funny thing about that being that often reverse search engines have a *very* difficult time finding images that have been reversed like this.
So the first time I ran this image search I got zero results. Having done this enough I was pretty positive this was a public domain image and had an idea of what might be happening. So I flipped the screen shot and tried my search again. BAM a full page of search results that eventually lead me to this image.
The “Whalebone Creek” seller that created this product obviously took the original illustration, flipped it, did a a few photoshop tweaks here and there and then listed it for $1250.
There is no mention of the artist, name of the work of art, or where it was sourced from other than this comment: “we search through thousands of antique images to find unusual art“
Final Thoughts
Whenever I show this to people, their first reaction is often to get angry that these companies are selling you something they didn’t even pay for and anyone can download for free. And I totally understand that feeling.
However, I also know that it takes TIME to source the good stuff from these public domain archives. It takes thousands of hours poking around galleries to find artwork that is suited for what today’s home decor shopper is looking for. Then there is the matter of printing the artwork. You can do this very cheaply yourself of course, but these companies are often making prints on high end museum quality archival papers that will last a very long time. After that comes the cost of custom framing the work of art, a service that can run into the hundreds of dollars.
So yes, they are getting the artwork for free and then turning around and selling it to you. But you are buying the time it took to source that work of art, for a high-quality print of that artwork (that you didn’t have to figure out how to do or where to get it printed or how to make sure the colors were rendered accurately) and a fancy custom framing job for your artwork so it’s ready to hang on the wall the moment you get it.
There is value in that for a lot of people who are willing to pay for those services to just be taken care of for them.
I just want you to be aware of what is happening so you can make an informed decision and decide for yourself if that is a service you are willing to pay for, or if you just want the free art download.
To decide if you’d rather just get a cheap print made and throw it in an inexpensive frame you thrifted for a few dollars so you can have the same beautiful wall art without the price tag.
Because I think EVERYONE deserves access to a beautiful, affordable home, no matter their budget.
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