How to Download Art for Free

Love Vincent van Gogh’s Irises? You’re in luck.

Photograph of figure standing backwards, in front of a painting depicting blue Irises

Looking at Irises by Vincent van Gogh

By Meg Butler

Feb 01, 2024

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At the Getty Center and Getty Villa Museum, we have thousands of paintings, sculptures, and other artworks in our galleries.

But did you know that we have even more artwork online? Our digital Museum Collection holds many more images of art owned by Getty.

A screenshot of a Getty webpage. The header reads "Search the Museum Collection." An empty search bar follows. Examples of art populate the bottom of the page

And, thanks to our Open Content program, which makes high-resolution images of public domain artwork available, you can download over 160,000 of them for free.

How to Download Getty Art for Free

If you want, for example, your own copy of Vincent van Gogh's Irises to use as your desktop background, simply pop the artist's name and/or the title of the work into the search bar.

A screenshot of a Getty webpage with "Van Gogh Irises" in the search bar. Several images of works of art appear below the search bar

Then select "Has Images" and "Open Content" to find the images that are free to download. Then hit "search" and you’re there.

A screenshot of the Van Gogh Irises page. Text describing the painting is on the left, an image of the painting is on the right

You’ll see "Public Domain" beneath all of our free images, and a link to download them in high resolution.

You can also find a few fun facts to the left of the image. Did you know that Van Gogh painted Irises when he was a patient at an asylum in Saint-Rémy, France? Or that his brother was responsible for introducing Irises to the public?

And Irises isn’t the only work of art that you can download for free. Have a favorite painter? You can find paintings by Paul Cézanne, a still life by Claude Monet, sketches by Edgar Degas, any of the artworks above, and many more by lots of other artists.

Don't have an artist in mind? You can also search for "sculptures," "flowers," "illuminated manuscripts," "dragons," or anything you'd like.

And, when you find them, you can zoom way in or see more views than you can in the gallery.

They're great for Zoom backgrounds, wall art, or DIY cards. Turn them into memes, have them printed on a T-shirt...the possibilities are endless.

And you never know what you’ll find. Images are continuously added to Getty’s Open Content database as more objects are acquired by the Museum and as others enter public domain.

So, if you see a very cool work of art, shoot us an email at stories[at]getty.edu and let us know how you used it!

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