Images / art

Two archives, queried live.

Every record below comes from The Met or Smithsonian Open Access and was filtered on that archive’s own rights field before it reached this page. 24 shown for “Howell and Brothers, 1835 – 1900” — 64 records examined, 17 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-03 15:40 UTC · fetched live for this request

Public domainThe Met’s isPublicDomain field is true for this object.

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian’s metadata_usage.access reads CC0 — a waiver, not an expired term.

Not shownAnything failing its archive’s rights field is dropped server-side and never appears here.

James Stuart (1612–1655), Duke of Richmond and Lennox

Anthony van Dyck · ca. 1633–35

Public domainThe Met

Ceiling paper

Howell and Brothers, 1835 – 1900 · 1905–1915

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Hester Jane Ogle, 1775/76–1817) and Her Son (Charles Brinsley Sheridan, 1796–1843)

John Hoppner

Public domainThe Met

Frieze

Howell and Brothers, 1835 – 1900 · 1905–1915

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

The Calmady Children (Emily, 1818–?1906, and Laura Anne, 1820–1894)

Sir Thomas Lawrence · 1823

Public domainThe Met

Ceiling paper

Howell and Brothers, 1835 – 1900 · 1905–1915

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Modern Genji – Firefly Viewing (Imayō genji shiken hotaru asobi)

Toyohara Kunichika · 1861

Public domainThe Met

Frieze

Howell and Brothers, 1835 – 1900 · 1905–1915

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Imaginary portrait, Shuihuzhuan of Stage: Tōryūdai (Mitate Suikoden Tōrōdai) - Actor, Ichikawa Danjūrō plays as Sanjō

Toyohara Kunichika · 1875

Public domainThe Met

Ceiling paper

Howell and Brothers, 1835 – 1900 · 1905–1915

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Imaginary portrait, Shuihuzhuan of Stage: Tōryūdai (Mitate Suikoden Tōrōdai) - Actor Ichikawa Sadanji plays Hanaoshō Shinkichi

Toyohara Kunichika · 1875

Public domainThe Met

Ceiling paper

Howell and Brothers, 1835 – 1900 · 1905–1915

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Imaginary portrait, Shuihuzhuan of Stage: Tōryūdai (Mitate Suikoden Tōrōdai) - Actor, Bandō Hikozaburō plays as Nyūunryū

Toyohara Kunichika · 1875

Public domainThe Met

Ceiling paper

Howell and Brothers, 1835 – 1900 · 1905–1915

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Imaginary portrait, Shuihuzhuan of Stage: Tōryūdai (Mitate Suikoden Tōrōdai) - Actor Nakamura Shikan plays Suekichi

Toyohara Kunichika · 1875

Public domainThe Met

Sidewall

Howell and Brothers, 1835 – 1900 · ca. 1880

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Imaginary portrait, Shuihuzhuan of Stage: Tōryūdai (Mitate Suikoden Tōrōdai) - Actor Onoe Kikugorō plays as Kumon no Ryūkichi

Toyohara Kunichika · 1875

Public domainThe Met

Frieze

Howell and Brothers, 1835 – 1900 · 1905–1915

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Sawamura Tosshō II (1838–86), from the series Mirror of Photographs Backstage (Shashin gakuya kagami - Sawamura Tosshō nisei)

Toyohara Kunichika · ca. 1859–61

Public domainThe Met

Ceiling paper

Howell and Brothers, 1835 – 1900 · 1905–1915

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Steamboats Passing at Midnight – On Long Island Sound

Currier & Ives · 1868–74

Public domainThe Met

Frieze

Howell and Brothers, 1835 – 1900 · 1905–1915

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Extraordinary Express Across the Atlantic – Pilot Boat Wm. J. Romer, [commanded by] Captain McGuire, Leaving for England, February 9th, 1846

Nathaniel Currier · 1846

Public domainThe Met

Ceiling paper

Howell and Brothers, 1835 – 1900 · 1905–1915

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

What was queried

Where these records came from.

Two archives are wired, and only two. Each one is filtered on its own rights field — never on a title match, and never on the presence of an image file.

The Met Collection API (Open Access)Rights field: isPublicDomain. 36 matched · 24 examined · 2 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.12 shown
Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 796 matched · 40 examined · 15 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where metadata_usage.access === "CC0" and an image resource was published.12 shown

These figures describe the pass run at 2026-09-03 15:40 UTC, during this request. A completed pass is kept for 24 hours and replayed for an identical search, which is what keeps repeated queries inside Smithsonian’s 30-requests-per-hour allowance. A pass in which either archive failed to answer is never kept — an outage must not be replayed as though it were a finding about the catalogue.

Wikimedia Commons and the Library of Congress are deliberately not wired. Wikimedia was confirmed, on a live query, to return CC-BY material inside the same result set as genuine public domain works, and filtering it safely has not been designed yet. loc.gov was blocked by bot detection during the source evaluation, so its rights vocabulary has never been observed — and nothing here is built on a field nobody has read.

An image file is a rights claim. It never travels without its field.

Read the method

Elsewhere in the catalogue

Section 01Character index9 hand-compiled entries, each with sources, version scope, and a confidence value.Section 02NewsWhat has already cleared the US term, and what clears next — January 1, 2027.Section 03MethodThree status values, three confidence values, and copyright kept apart from trademark.