Bridgeman Art Library

The Bridgeman Art Library is a company that represents museums, art collections and artists throughout the world by providing a central source of fine art and photography for image users.

The company's aim is to make these images accessible for users on a commercial basis; each one has been catalogued with full picture data and key-worded to simplify the search process. A full research service is also provided whereby expert researchers can select images to the customer's requirements.

In addition to fine art, designs, antiques, maps, architecture, furniture, art glass, ceramics, anthropological artefacts- and many other media are featured in the collection.

Bridgeman also provides customers with reproduction licensing and offers advice on how to clear artist's copyright, if additional permission is needed. Copyright holders receive remuneration in the form of half the reproduction fee paid by the customer.

As well as supplying images to consumers, Bridgeman works with copyright holders to create high quality reproductions of artists' works using the latest imaging technology. These reproductions can be ordered through various Web sites and apps such as Art Authority.

Over 500 new images are added to the Bridgeman archive each week. Museums represented in the archive include the British Museum; the British Library; the National Galleries of Scotland, Sweden and South Africa; the Hamburg Kunsthalle; and the Barnes Foundation.

The company was involved in the case Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., in which the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that exact photographic copies of two-dimensional works in the public domain cannot be copyrighted, even if making the image takes considerable effort, because the resulting works lack originality.

• Selected images from Bridegemanart Library
• 
  Personification or Allegory of Vanitas (self-portrait), most probably Clara Peeters, 1613–20
• 
  View of Schmiedebergerkamm, Caspar David Friedrich, 1837
• 
  Crab Fishing, Winslow Homer, 1883
• 
  A Summer Shower, Charles Edward Perugini, ca. 1888
• 
  Family Quarrel, Konstantin Savitsky, 1890
• 
  Otto Beit in his study at Belgrave Square, William Orpen, 1913
• 
  Rue a Auver-sur-Oise, Vincent van Gogh

• List of online image archives

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Images from Bridgemanart Library.

• Bridgeman Images