How to use this site
This is a digital collection of public-domain fine art. You filter the collection, then look at works in a grid or as a slideshow. There is no keyword search — filters are artist, title prefix, year, and orientation.
Home
The homepage opens on a featured-artist slideshow. Gérôme is the default, starting with Young Greeks at a Cock Fight. Cards under the slider open Gérôme, Alma-Tadema, and Renoir. Play, pause, and scrub, or use overlay and fullscreen to jump into the gallery on that work.
The form under the slideshow is the same as Search. Browse sends you to the results grid rather than paging the homepage.
Featured
Featured collections is the same three artists as the homepage cards: Gérôme, Alma-Tadema, and Renoir. Each card opens that artist’s full collection as a slideshow — Luncheon of the Boating Party first for Renoir, then the rest.
Search
Search is the collection grid. Combine filters as you like:
- Artist — type a name; suggestions fill in as you go. Matching is on the catalog name, not a free-text guess.
- Title prefix — titles that start with what you type, not words that appear later in the title.
- Year — the catalog year, when we have one.
- Orientation — portrait, landscape, or square.
Leave every field blank to browse the entire collection. From any result set, Start slideshow opens the gallery on that search. If you already walked that same search, it becomes Resume slideshow and picks up where you left off.
Artists
Artists is an A–Z list by last name, paged, with a prefix box if a letter is still too long. Choosing an artist opens Search filtered to that name.
Gallery
The gallery is a slideshow of one search at a time, in collection order. An open search is the entire collection; a Gérôme search is only Gérôme. Controls hide after a few seconds of stillness so the image can fill the screen — move the mouse or tap to bring them back.
- Prev / Next — step one work. The queue wraps when you hit either end.
- Play / Pause — auto-advance. Interval is in seconds.
- Search — return to the grid for this same filter set.
- Status — see the queue name and how far through it you are.
- Fullscreen — the browser’s fullscreen mode.
Keyboard: left and right arrows step, space plays or pauses. The caption line shows the queue — for example Entire collection · 150,000 / 249,347 or Jean-Léon Gérôme · 50 / 244.
Status
Status names the current queue and the work you are on — image 50 of 244, not a mystery id. Recent queues stay listed so you can jump back to the open collection after a narrower search, or the other way around.
Place is remembered in this browser, not as an account. Closing the tab is fine; another computer or a private window will not have it.
Artwork pages
Each work in Search has a page with the high-resolution image, title, artist, source, and original image id. From there you can open the slideshow on that work, or see more by the same artist. Source links go to the institution we archived from.