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Color-enhanced image of a diatom frustule by Annie Cavanagh. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY 4.0.

As part of our Open Artstor initiative, we are making an increasing number of Creative Commons-licensed museum, library, and archive collections freely accessible to everyone on our platform — already a destination for scholars using visual media. The collections have been selected for their value to the humanities and sciences, providing researchers with a central place in which to discover and use open images from a wide variety of sources alongside other relevant materials.

Great news for those who enjoy discovering unexpected new images in Artstor: We made some changes that make it easier to browse works by a single creator and images related to a specific subject!

Now, when you view an image record in Artstor, you can click the name in the creator field to search for other works by the same creator, such as the example below showing works by the photographer Pierre Louis Pierson.

Pierre-Louis Pierson. Countess de Castiglione. 1895. Image and data courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art

James M. Sommerville, Christian Schussele. Ocean Life. c. 1859. Image and data provided by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain.

During the mid-nineteenth century, the Atlantic presented a new, rich and formidable frontier to American innovators who were laying the cables for the first transcontinental telegraph, to scientists capturing their first glimpses of aquatic life forms, and to artists exploring the hitherto unseen landscapes of the deep.

Decorative arts, which bridge the realms of fine art and function, often seem to highlight aristocratic tastes. These selections from The Clark’s collection, while valued for their craftsmanship and design, offer insights into the everyday lives of early Americans. These recent additions to the Artstor Digital Library also highlight a new interface in which multiple images of an object are grouped together, allowing users to access alternate views more easily.

Paul Revere, Jr. Sugar bowl and cover. c. 1795. Image and original data provided by Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

Paul Revere, Jr. Teapot. c. 1785. Image and original data provided by Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

Paul Revere, Jr. teapot (detail showing embossed mark). c. 1785. Image and original data provided by Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

The first selections were crafted by a familiar name from the Colonial period, Paul Revere. Although he is best known for his historic ride, he prided himself as a master artisan. Views of this Neoclassical sugar bowl illustrate his advanced skills and sense of design. The tea kettle, perhaps an early example of Revere Ware (see the embossed mark in detail), was a more common piece in colonial kitchens. It reminds us of tea’s importance to the colonists – which was also borne out by the infamous protest of the British tea tax, the Boston Tea Party. Revere was in sympathy with this cause; he captured some of the passions that led up to the rebellion in a famous engraving of the Boston Massacre. (1)

The history of ornithology (the scientific study of birds) has involved observations captured in imagery going as far back as prehistoric stone-age drawings.[1] As ornithology developed as a natural science it faced the aesthetic challenge of convincingly capturing depictions of different bird species,[2] leading to beautifully documented and historically fascinating works of illustration.

Several Artstor public collections — available freely to anyone — showcase ornithological illustration starting as early as the 16th century and on through to the 19th century. Here are three of our favorites:

Cornell’s Laboratory of Ornithology Gallery of Bird and Wildlife Art has more than 1,000 works of art from the last two centuries by bird artists such as Alexander Wilson, John James Audubon, and Louis Agassiz Fuertes.

Alexander Pope, Jr. The Pinnated Grouse. 1878. Cornell University Lab of Ornithology Art Collection.

Louis Agassiz Fuertes. Imperial Eagle. Ca. 1895. Cornell University Lab of Ornithology Art Collection

Vasily Perov. Portrait of Fyodor Dostoevsky. 1872. Image and original data provided by SCALA, Florence/ART RESOURCE, N.Y., artres.com, scalarchives.com

In August 1867, shortly after Fyodor Dostoevsky married his stenographer Anna Snitkina, the couple headed to Geneva. As much as a honeymoon, they were also fleeing family tensions and hounding by Fyodor’s many creditors. On the way, the newlyweds stopped in Basel for a day and visited its museum. It was there that the famed writer of Crime and Punishment had an unsettling encounter with an artwork that would soon appear in one of his most esteemed novels.

Attributed to Studio of unknown French (illuminator), Possibly Style of unknown Flemish (illuminator). c.1470 (creation date). Book of Hours (Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis in Usum Ecclesiae Romanae cum Calendario), Folio 86v: Hours of the Virgin: Compline: Entombment, overall, left, with Folio 87r at right. Illumination, Leaf (component), Manuscript. Place: Trinity College, Watkinson Library (Hartford, Connecticut, USA).

Books of hours are devotional texts that contain a personalized selection of prayers, hymns, psalms, and New Testament excerpts chosen specifically for their owner. Popular in the Middle Ages, the most expensive of these books could be highly decorated, but the more affordable versions usually only showed minimal decoration, usually of the first letter of a page. They had, in fact, become so popular by the 16th century that they were often owned by people from all walks of society; servants even had their own copies—there is a court case from 1500 where a pauper woman was accused of stealing a servant’s book of hours. 

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Chinese. Pair of Famille Verte Vases. Yung Chêng Period (1723-1735). Porcelain. Image and data provided by The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.

Guillaume Lethière (French, 1760 - 1832). Brutus Condemning His Sons to Death. 1788. Oil on canvas. Image and data provided by The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.

Beverly Bennett Dobbs (American, 1868-1937). Berry Pickers|Seward Peninsula, Alaska, U.S.A. 1903-6. Gelatin silver print. Image and data provided by The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.

What’s new in the Artstor Digital Library? The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

Contributor:
The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

Content:
The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute has contributed 5,000* images of additional works for their Artstor Digital Library collection. These include a recent acquisition, the iconic Brutus Condemning His Sons to Death, selections from their prized decorative art objects, as well as numerous historical prints and photographs.

The Clark also supplied new photography for most of the works previously published in their Artstor collection. These updates, with the additional submissions noted above, mean users will enjoy nearly 10,000* new images from the museum.

Relevance:
Art, culture, and history from around the globe, notably America, Asia, and Europe

*Totals may vary depending on domestic or international release.

Summer solstice brings us the longest, sunniest days of the year. The season also sparkles with starry nights, and getaways in July and August provide an escape from the urban glare, enhancing our appreciation of stellar skies. In homage to the stars, we have mined the resources of Artstor to present some outstanding celestial subjects across the ages.

Vincent van Gogh. The Starry Night. 1889. Image and data provided by the Museum of Modern Art.

Starry Night, 1889, by Vincent van Gogh, exemplifies the genre of the nocturne. The artist’s unique style might lead one to believe that the entire scene is imaginary, but researchers have identified many of the planets depicted; to name one, Venus shines white above the horizon at left. Nonetheless, the painter took liberties with the moon, rendering it as a crescent when in fact it would have been a fuller waning gibbous on that night, June 18. In a letter to his sister written the previous year, van Gogh articulated his observation of star fields: “certain stars are citron-yellow, others have a pink glow, or a green, blue and forget-me-not brilliance… putting little white dots on a blue-black surface is not enough.” [1]