Something I've always wondered, maybe the smart people on the forum will be able to enlighten me : Why can't we find good quality pictures of paintings on the Internet ? I spent some time searching and could only find pretty low quality images.

This would have many advantages, like less people taking photographs of all the paintings in the museums, and would also allow those who can't travel to enjoy them too.

I guess there's a good reason for this, maybe the museums want to protect their income streams ? maybe it is too expensive to properly scan the paintings ?

I've seen that some companies sell posters of those paintings, so I guess digital pictures exist, somewhere ...

the museum holding on to it's revenue streams is one reason.

The other one is that the person who took or person/company who commissioned the photograph owns the copyright to the photo even though the actual paint is/maybe in the public domain.

Strange. I've got a folder on my computer full of large good quality digital images of artworks by people such as Titian, Botticelli, Courbet, Reubens etc. I use them as a personal screensaver.

I just went to Google image search, typed in the artists name and made sure that "Large images" was selected in the drop down box and saved all the ones that took my fancy. None of them are smaller than 1000 pixels.


Here, for example is a search I did , selecting large images, for Botticelli

HTH

Most computer screens have a 72 dot per inch (dpi) resolution - some have 96dpi. Both are well below the 300 to 600 dpi required to print with any quality.

As the higher quality cannot be seen on the screen and increasing the quality increases to file size and thus the download time, all online images should be low quality 72dpi ones. Additionally as a screen is lit, one can get away with degraded quality without it being apparent in anything but the lower file size - and poor quality if printed out. A single image from a digital camera can be 2 to 4Mb in size - even with broadband you notice this islow to downlaod - and takes up valuable space on servers.

So, copyright issues aside, this is a reason why online images are 'poor' quality...

Thanks for the answers !

When I was mentioning "high quality" I was thinking more in the range of 3000+ pixels wide. I also agree that images that size are not fit for general web display but more for download, either as screen savers/backgrounds or for study purposes.

Even in the 1000 - 2000 pixel range, it looks like not all the artists enjoy the same popularity on the internet, for example Miro

It's a pity that sites such as the Web Museum haven't really developed. How nice would that be to be able to browse all these paintings in the comfort of home rather than standing in a museum. This would also allow for a richer experience, by being able to get more information about a particular artist or topic from Wikipedia ...