200,000 artworks from over 3250 British museums and collections. 2nd century to 2018.
From Stanford U. Use it to explore the literary geography of ca. 1600 London place references in ca. 200 works by 47 authors. Interactive map and several base maps to choose from where you can browse and search by literary author name, place name, or book title. Narrow results by genre, form, time period, social class. Allows readers to examine the City from literary, geographical, and biographical perspectives. Has a re-usable platform 'Authorial [x]' which allows people to create similar projects for other locations.
Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) Geoportal
Digitized historical and contemporary online maps and GIS datasets the map library holdings of the Big Ten universities in the U.S. Middle West. Not a lot on the British Isles, but there are some.
Black Cultural Archives grew from a community response to the New Cross Massacre (1981), the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (1984); underachievement of Black children in British schools, the failings of the Race Relations Act 1976, and the negative impacts of racism against, and a lack of popular recognition of, and representation by people of African and Caribbean descent in the UK. Our founders, including the iconic Len Garrison, came to the conclusion that what was needed was a space where members of the community, especially young people, could come and find positive representations of themselves in history and culture. This act of self-help expanded into the creation of what our founders called an ‘archive museum’ that evidenced and painted a more comprehensive picture of Black presence in Britain. They collect and preserve materials which redress the historical balance and representation of people of African and Caribbean descent in Britain. Their archive collection is now one of the most comprehensive collections that document the history and cultural heritage of Black Britain. Originating as a community archive amassed over many years, the archive has been transformed into a professional archive that meets international quality standards and houses over 50 sq metrics of archival materials across two sites.
Black History and Culture Collection
From Getty Images, this is an initiative created to provide free non-commercial access to historical and cultural images of the African/Black Diaspora in the US and UK from the 19th century to present day. The collection aims to grant access to rarely seen images for educators, academics, researchers, and content creators, enabling them to tell untold stories around Black culture. The collection is available for projects focused on education around the histories and cultures of the African/Black Diaspora, dating back to the 1800s. Content created from the collection by partners must not produce revenue and/or be included in any revenue driving advertising or marketing.
Bombsight: Mapping the WW2 Bomb Census
Bombsight, a project of the British National Archives, allows readers to experience the World War II bombing of London through interactive maps, photographs, and narratives. The landing page has a map of London covered with numbered red dots, each related to the bombing of that particular location. Selecting one of the dots pulls up a short description of the location and the explosive. Readers may then click on "read more" to navigate to a page that includes images related to the area, as well links to people's stories related to the area.
This is a commercial site from which researchers purchase the images. But, the collection is large and covers history, literature, places, people, etc.
''With images from over 8,000 collections and more than 29,000 artists, we represent international museums, galleries and artists by providing a central source of fine art for image users.
Founded in 1972, the Bridgeman Art Library works with museums, art galleries and artists to make the best art available for reproduction. The result is an outstanding archive of images drawn from collections throughout the world, all of which are available for licensing.
Every subject, concept, style and medium is represented, from the masterpieces of national museums to the hidden treasures of private collections. Fine art is just one of the sources of images; design, antiques, maps, architecture, furniture, glass, ceramics, anthropological artefacts and many others also feature in the collection.
We aim to make these images accessible for every user; each one has been catalogued with full picture data and key-worded to make searching easy, even for those with little art knowledge. Our website allows you to explore the collection in depth with quick and advanced search facilities. We also provide a full research service whereby our expert researchers can select images to suit your requirements.
Many further images are available offline through our four offices in London, Paris, New York and Berlin and the archive is constantly growing; our team of specialists continue to search the art collections of the world to find new and exciting images for you to use.''
Features images from the Aerofilms collection, a unique aerial photographic archive of international importance. Includes 1.26 million negatives and more than 2000 photograph albums. Dating from 1919 to 2006, the total collection presents an unparalleled picture of the changing face of Britain in the 20th century. It includes the largest and most significant number of air photographs of Britain taken before 1939. Includes urban, suburban, rural, coastal and industrial scenes, providing important evidence for understanding and managing the built and natural environments. The collection was created by Aerofilms Ltd, a pioneering air survey company set up in 1919 by First World War veterans Francis Lewis Wills and Claude Grahame-White. In addition to Aerofilms’ own imagery, the firm expanded its holdings with the purchase of two smaller collections – AeroPictorial (1934-1960) and Airviews (1947-1991). It was bought by Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), English Heritage (EH), and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales (RCAHMW) from Blom ASA in 2007.
British Cartoon Archive is a research center and library of British cartooning located in in the Templeman Library at the University of Kent, Canterbury. Its web site features a catalog with images of over 130,000 cartoons published in the British press, as well as information about the archive, announcements of special events, featured cartoons and cartoonists, teaching aids, and other useful material. The primary draw is the catalog database of images (back to the 1790s), which extends beyond the Archives' own physical collection (back to 1904). Detailed cataloging records. Searching by keyword and date.
The British Council is the United Kingdom's international organization for educational opportunities and cultural relations. There is information on studying in the U.K., funding and scholarships, the arts, literature, learning and teaching English, visiting Britain, visas, etc.
BFI supports British film and TV industries through funding and educational endeavors. See the Explore Film and TV and Education and Research sections. Former allows for searching of the BFI National Archive with moving images, stills, posters, ephemera, articles and lists about films. Education and Research section has a statistical yearbook, exit polls, reports on audience habits and cultural impacts. The Britain on Film Archive is making available, via its BFI Player, 1,000s of films, preserved, 120 years of British life, many unseen for decades. Now contains London on Film also.
Links to their online collection offerings.
News and entertainment video film archive. Since the invention of the moving image in the 1890's, British Link to their WWI films.Pathé began recording every aspect of global culture and news, for the cinema. Encompasses one of the world's most prodigious and fascinating documents of the modern age. Fashion trends, warfare, famous faces, sport, travel, culture, major events all covered. Especially useful about WWI and WWII. British Pathé is a definitive source for the 20th century in moving images. All 85,000 newsreels, 1896-1976, are now searchable and viewable on YouTube. This equates to 3,500 hours of filmed history. Link to WWI films.
Broadsides Printed in Scotland 1650-1910
Broadsides were single sheet publications that were cheap to produce and easy to distribute. As such, they were quite common during the 1600s-1900s. The popularity of broadsides decreased in the mid-19th century with the increased availability newspapers "penny dreadfuls." Images of the broadsides can be browsed at the Library's Word on the Street website (linked near the bottom of the page). Alternatively, readers can download the datasets (in their entirety or just the text). The website also provides copyright information for the broadsides, noting that items published up to 1854 are known to be free of copyright restrictions, while items printed after 1855 might be restricted.
Provides access to images of thousands of artifacts and objects from the London-based Science Museum's medical collections. Historical timeline, essays on key themes such as "birth and death" and "diseases and epidemics."
Launched in 1903 and still published, the Burlington Magazine is the longest running academic art journal in the English language. This site in Internet Archive offers some early issues online, from 1903-1922. Includes all text and images (including photos and illustrations in both color and black and white).
Has a collection of over 6,000 original cartoons and comic artworks and a library of over 8,000 books and comics.
Charles Booth's London: Poverty Maps and Police Notebooks
Charles Booth (1840-1916) was a British businessman and social reformer remembered today mostly for his efforts to document poverty in 19th c. London. He published a multi-volume work, Inquiry into Life and labor in London, published 1889-1903. It is perhaps best known for Booth's Maps Descriptive of London Poverty, which are color-coded according to wealth distribution in London on a street-by-street basis. In this web site you can explore a digitized version of one of his "poverty maps" and use a slider at screen bottom to transition to a modern-day Google map. You can search to explore particular neighborhoods or streets, some explore some of of Booth's notebooks to learn more about his research process. The notebooks include a series of entries by policemen who helped Booth survey neighborhoods for his maps.
Charles Peirce Collection of Social and Political Caricatures and Ballads
The Charles Peirce Collection of Social and Political Caricatures and Ballads brings together a range of fabulous prints published in London during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This collection eventually found its way to the American Antiquarian Society.
From the site: "Colouring London is a free knowledge exchange platform, designed by University College London to collate, collect, generate, visualise, and make accessible, around fifty categories of statistical data, for every building in London. We're looking for volunteers of all ages and abilities, and from all sectors and disciplines, to join our open data project and help create, test and use our free statistical database, and beautiful, colour-coded building maps. If you live in, study, design, build, care for, manage or just love London's buildings, our open data platform is here for you to use, and where you can share your knowledge to make London more sustainable."
Collage--the London Picture Archive
An image website for the City of London's collection of paintings, drawings, watercolours, prints, photos, maps and ephemera from c1450 to modern times from the holdings of the London Metropolitan Archives and Guildhall Art Gallery. They say they have the greatest visual assemblage of London visual materials that exists. In recent years they have added film. Views of buildings, streets, panoramas, aerial views, rivers, portraits of people, more. Look up by artist, street name, building, person, artistic medium, date. Galleries of images to browse through. London Picture Map allows one to search images related to particular districts by clicking on a portion of the street plan. On site they offer Collage Researcher with even more material.
Courtauld Gallery: Beyond the Label
Presents extended information about selected works and their creators in the collection, beyond what typically fits on an exhibit label.
Courtauld Image Libraries Access here to:
Collection of Witt Library includes photographs and reproductions of Western paintings, drawings and engravings from c. 1200 to the present day. Conway Library holds photographs of architecture, architectural drawings, sculpture and illuminated manuscripts covering the period from approximately the fifth century B.C. to the present; there are also sections devoted to metalwork, ivories, coins and medals, stained glass, panel and wall painting. Slide Library has over 200,000 slides covering a range of subjects from painting, sculpture and architecture to illuminated manuscripts, prints and decorative arts. It also includes videos of art historical interest, including films about individual artists, techniques and museums as well as feature films with art historical themes. The Photographic Survey records the works of art in private collections in England, Wales and Ireland and to make their existence known to scholars.
Crace Collection of Maps of London
This is the essential guide through the history of London: some 1200 printed and hand-drawn maps charting the development of the city and its immediate vicinity from around 1570 to 1860. The maps were collected, mainly during the first half of the nineteenth century, by the fashionable Victorian society designer, Frederick Crace. After entering the site look for the link to "See all the items in this exhibition." From the British Library Map Collections. See our online catalog title Catalog of Maps, Plans, and Views of London, by Frederick Crace, available online in HT for further information.
Crace Collection of Views of London
At the page, type "Crace" into the search box. 5,000 some images came up Oct. 1, 2019, but Advanced Search is not working. Frederick Crace was Commissioner of Sewers who became obsessed with illustrating every building of note in the City. Collection contains about 6000 prints and drawings of view of London between mid 17th c. and 1859, when he died. See our online catalog for title Catalog of Maps, Plans, and Views of London, available online in HT for further info.
Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (U.K.)
The DCMS is responsible for [British] Government policy on the arts, sport, the National Lottery, tourism, libraries, museums and galleries, broadcasting, film, the music industry, press freedom and regulation, licensing, gambling and the historic environment. They are also responsible for the listing of historic buildings and scheduling of ancient monuments, the export licensing of cultural goods, the management of the Government Art Collection and for the Royal Parks Agency.
English Heritage, officially the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England, is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Goverment sponsored by the Dept. for Culture, Media and Sport. They are best known as the steward of over 400 significant historical and archaeological sites. They maintain a public archive, the English Heritage Archive, formerly known as the National Monuments Record, whose Catalogue includes descriptions of more than a million photographs and documents. Portico contains in-depth histories of English Heritage sites. Heritage Gateway has national and local records for England's historic sites and buildings. PastScape is for England's archaeological and architectural heritage. Heritage Explorer contains image resources for teachers. Designated Datasets are available for download and can be used with GIS (Geographic Information System); they include data on listed buildings, scheduled monuments, registered parks and gardens, registered battlefields, World Heritage sites, and protected wreck sites.
A federated search engine across many free and pay full-text sources that pulls together content from European libraries, museums, etc. Europeana enables people to explore the digital resources of Europe's museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections. It promotes discovery and networking opportunities in a multilingual space where users can engage, share in and be inspired by the rich diversity of Europe's cultural and scientific heritage. Ideas and inspiration can be found within the more than 15 million items on Europeana. These objects include images, texts, sounds, and videos.
The Fashion and Textile Museum Collection highlights the changing face of contemporary fashion from 1947 to the present day. It was founded in 2003, by icon of British design, Dame Zandra Rhodes. Today, the Museum is operated by Newham College, London – one of Europe’s largest further education colleges.
This is open-access source for fashion history knowledge, featuring objects and artworks from over a hundred museums and libraries. It offers well-researched, accessibly written entries on specific artworks, garments and films for those interested in fashion and dress history. Decade and century overview pages offer visual examples of period styles, a visually rich fashion dictionary defines key terms, and hundreds of examples of dress analysis from antiquity to the present day model the complicated task of discerning whether something is fashionable or merely everyday dress, as well as the historical implications of that distinction. It features a search-able Source Database of reliable academic publications on fashion and dress history and a much more extensive Zotero database that students and researchers can draw on and contribute to. It is a project of the History of Art dept. at New York University.
Formerly known as the Museum of Costume, the Fashion Museum is located in Bath, England. It collects and displays examples of historic and contemporary dress and style. Focus is on British design and designers. Exhibitions section is organized chronologically: past, present, future, with text and photographs. Can browse the Museum's full library of digitized images. Simple or advanced searches possible also.
The Foundling Museum in Brunswick Square, London tells the story of the Foundling Hospital, Britain's first home for children at risk of abandonment. Houses the Foundling Hospital Collection as well as Gerald Coke Handel Collection, related to musician Handel and his contemporaries. Foundling Hospital continues today as the charity Coram (for Thomas Coram, philanthropist, the initiator of it, in 1739). Museum celebrates the ways creative people have helped improve children's lives for over 275 years. The Foundling Hospital was the U.K.'s first charity for children. Original buildings were torn down in 1926 when the facility moved out of London to Berkhamsted. The Foundation, Coram, built a new HQ at 40 Brunswick Square, where the Museum now is. The Museum became a separate charity in 1998.
The Friends of the City Churches are an architectural heritage charity dedicated to preserving the beautiful and unique churches found within the square mile of the City of London. Maps. Links to web sites of individual churches. Click on tab for Church Finder.
The Garden Museum explores and celebrates British gardens and gardening through its collection, temporary exhibitions, events and garden. They have an exhibit Sowing Roots: Caribbean Garden Heritage in South London about the history of gardening cultures and traditions that Caribbean people brought with them when they moved to the UK after WWII.
Goad Fire Insurance Maps of the British Isles
Maps are in the B.L. This link goes to access via Wikimedia Commons, which is more direct than via the B.L. site. Charles Edward Goad (March 15, 1848 – June 10, 1910 ) was a noted cartographer and civil engineer. Goad is most noted for his insurance surveys of cities in Canada, Great Britain, and elsewhere. Fire insurance companies needed to know in detail the nature and size of buildings, width of streets, construction, building materials and the proximity of fire services and water supplies in order to estimate appropriate premiums. Goad established a company (the Charles E. Goad Company) in 1875 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada to produce maps to provide this information. These and like maps are now referred to as Goad maps. Goad returned to England in 1885 and began work in Britain.
Image Bank Buildings and Topography from Roman to Industrial England
From Dave Postles, University of Leicester, medieval historian with Anglocentric bent. All images are Creative Commons and may be used for any purpose. They comprise buildings and topography from Roman to Industrial England.
This is a 115 pp. report. It "details the connections 93 historic places in [National Trust's] care have with colonialism and historic slavery. This includes the global slave trades, goods and products of enslaved labour, abolition and protest, and the East India Company. It draws on recent evidence including the Legacies of British Slave-ownership project and the Trust’s own sources. It also documents the way that significant Trust buildings are linked to the abolition of slavery and campaigns against colonial oppression." Edited by "Dr Sally-Anne Huxtable (National Trust Head Curator), Professor Corinne Fowler (University of Leicester), Dr Christo Kefalas (National Trust World Cultures Curator), Emma Slocombe (National Trust Textiles Curator) with contributions from other National Trust curators and researchers around the country. Some of the research has already been used to update our digital content and supports visitor information and interpretation at relevant places."
Located in Liverpool, England. Is part of National Museums Liverpool. This is just one of their museums. "Hear the untold stories of enslaved people and learn about historical and contemporary slavery." Click on "All Venues" near top and scroll down to International Slavery Museum.
Internet Archives Map of Book Subjects (Images)
In Dec., 2014 there were 2,619,833 images in the books in the collection of e-books in the Internet Archive's Book Collection. This link allows you to search for and use the images in these e- books by subject/thematic relationship.
Based out of Milwaukee, the Ward Irish Music Archives were established in 1992 and is dedicated to the preservation of Irish and Irish-American music in all of its forms. Visitors to this remarkable site can browse over 5,000 pieces of Irish and Irish-American sheet music. While some of these ditties are not in the public domain, the collection can be narrowed down by filtering for only publicly available items. The History section contains a topical history of sheet music from the days of the broadside to the more challenging days of the early 21st century when digital versions became dominant. The Galleries are another great feature, containing additional information about cover artists, composers, and themes.
King George III Topographical and Maritime Collections
The King’s Topographical collection, the map collection of George III, is one of the world’s most important historical resources. Donated to the nation by George IV in 1828, it comprises approximately 30–40,000 maps, plans and views, both printed and hand-drawn, of all parts of the world, particularly Great Britain and the then British Empire. The material ranges in date from about 1540 to 1824, and is extremely varied in terms of format and size. The Maritime Collection of George III consists of hand-drawn and printed sea charts and atlases of the 16th to 19th centuries. It was donated by George IV to the Admiralty, and from there to the British Museum in 1844.
Layers of London is a digital mapping platform where users can overlay historical maps over the contemporary map of London to see how the city has changed through time. Uses crowdsourcing. Project of the Centre for Metropolitan History of the Institute of Historical Research in U.K. People need to set up their own accounts in this resource, but it is free to use.
Contains English caricatures and political satirical prints from the 17th-19th centuries.
Provides an intuitive GIS interface enabling researchers to map and visualize textual and artefactual data relating to seventeenth and eighteenth-century London against John Rocque’s 1746 map of London and the first accurate modern OS map. Brought to you by Centre for Metropolitan History, Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet St., London.
Over 250,000 images of London from the collections at London Metropolitan Archives and Guildhall Art Gallery.
London Transport Museum Poster Collection
With over 5,000 posters and 700 original poster artworks, this digital collection from the London Transport Museum is one of the web's finest repositories of Great Britain's public art. There are links to various themes, such as Beyond the City, Entertainment, Events, London's Transport System, Wartime London, and others.
Contains color photos of the architectural work of Sir Edwin Lutyens, 1869-1944, major architect of English country houses and other buildings. See under "About Lutyens" tab, exhibitions, also the bibliography.
From the British Film Institute. Shows settings of hundreds of films in the U.K. and Ireland. Search by location, by decade, by subjects. Watch short clips of identified films. Clips date back to the earliest days of film. Illustrates both importance of geography in films as well as how film plays a role in constructing and representing space.
Yes, it has English Gothic also. France and Great Britain are home to a number of striking examples of gothic architecture built in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, including cathedrals and castles. On this website, created by Columbia University art historian and archeology scholar Stephen Murray and Vassar College art professor Andrew Tallon, visitors can explore photographs of these structures and learn more about the history of this architecture. On The Main Map, visitors can explore annotated photographs of structures by geographic pin. Many of these pins included multiple photographs, allowing visitors to examine the exterior and interior of structures in great deal from their own computer. The majority of structures are located in modern France, but this collection also includes a large number of buildings in the United Kingdom. Another way to experience the site is via The Historical Maps and Timeline section, which features an animated map outlining the intersections between the history of France and the construction of these buildings. Meanwhile, visitors with a passion for architecture will enjoy the Comparison feature, which allows visitors to layer a variety of exterior and interior architectural features on different structures. A work in progress, the Stories and Essays section provides more information about Gothic architecture as well as the history of France.
MEMSlib Online Medieval Resources
From University of Kent, Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Offers links to web sites in manuscript studies (to help with paleography and codicology), medieval history art and architecture (image sourcing sites), and early modern history (best digitized text sites and general reference bibliographies). Also offers a Forum where people can ask each other questions.
Look for link on site to Exhibitions and displays. They have a display on London Port City describing 200 years of activity on the Thames riverfront from the late 18th c. onwards. And another display Power and Place, Feeding Black Community explores modern food culture and existing legacies around sugar and London's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.
Formerly called the Geffrye Museum. The Museum of the Home is housed in almshouses built in 1714 with money from Sir Robert Geffrye, 1613-1704. He was involved in the East India and Royal African Companies and invested in the forced labour and trading of enslaved Africans. He part owned a slave ship called the China Merchant. His profits were very likely sufficient to fund the core part of his legacy. However, Geffrye is not connected to the founding of the Museum or what is in its collections. The Museum has a collection of around 40,000 objects including library and archives. The collection is mainly everyday domestic objects dating from 1600 to the present day.
National Archives Maps and Plans
This is a link to the research guide the U.K. National Archives (Kew) offers for learning about their collection of maps and plans and how to use them. Learn the scope of their collection re local, railroad, military, Ordnance Survey, overseas, and published maps. Learn how to search in their collection for them. Learn about similar collections located elsewhere.
It is the world’s largest, and most significant, accumulation of objects and archives relating to the British Army and other Land Forces of the British Crown (including the former Indian Army until 1947). It consists of over one million items, spanning a 600-year period, and is likely to hold items or references that will be of use to your research into British military history. Altogether, the Collection comprises: over 100,000 archives; 58,000 printed books and periodicals; 10,000 separate photographic collections (containing over 240,000 photographs); 3,670 maps and charts; 100,000 items of uniform badges and medals; 23,000 items of equipment and vehicles.
The Art Library of the Victoria and Albert Museum (see V and A Images, below). Author, title, L.C. subject heading, and keyword searches are possible.
National Gallery Picture Images [U.K.]
"Welcome to the National Gallery Picture Library. We have created this site primarily for image professionals, allowing access to and rights clearances for images in the National Gallery’s world-famous collection.
* Search the National Gallery’s collection online using simple keyword searches or our specially tailored advanced search facility
* Browse the collection by theme, subject or style
* Create and manage your search results using our light box facility
* Use our online price calculator to quickly and easily obtain quotes for a variety of standard image usages
* Use your credit card or customer account to pay for and download high resolution image files directly from the site
We recommend the use of our new generation of images now available as downloads from this site. You can read more about the technical aspects of our digitisation process, and the files it generates, in Image information. In addition to those digital formats available online, we can supply digital image files on CD to suit your needs. To order material, please complete our Picture Library request form. We have created this website to allow easy viewing, accessing and licensing of our images from wherever you are in the world, but we still like to keep in touch with our clients. Based next door to the Gallery, we are available during normal office hours to respond to queries you may have about our service or images. We recommend you check our FAQs before making direct contact with us, as you may find your answer quicker there."
National Galleries of Scotland: Collections
Find works in storage, or otherwise not on view, at their four locations. Artworks are organized into browsable groups, such as new acquisitions, Surrealism, contemporary art in Scotland, highlights, photography. Select a work and then learn more about the artist and his/her related works. Browse in other ways on the art and artists tab.
National Library of Scotland Map Images
Contains 48,000 maps of Scotland dated from 1590-1961. Includes also some maps from the rest of the British Isles, including 1890s of London.
Has "Search Our Collections" to browse their database of over 24,000 objects.
National Portrait Gallery: Digital Resources
Collection of almost 200,000 portraits searchable online. This site has tools to help teachers and visitors better utilize the collections. To search their catalog, click on "Collections" on left side.
"We protect historic houses, gardens, mills, coastline, forests, woods, fens, beaches, farmland, moorland, islands, archaeological remains, nature reserves, villages and pubs. Then we open them up for ever, for everyone. At the bottom of the page, there is a link to National Trust Images. Near the top of this page, towards the center, there is a "Filter Search." Clicking there opens up a variety of things one may search for, such as interiors, exteriors, landscapes, portraiture, paintings, etc.
"Old Book Illustrations was born of the desire to share illustrations from a modest collection of books, which we set out to scan and publish. With the wealth of resources available online, it became increasingly difficult to resist the temptation to explore other collections and include these images along with our own." Contains links to book illustrations first published in the 18th century through the first quarter of the 20th century. We particularly emphasizes Victorian and French Romantic illustrations up to the death of Gustave Dore. "We also focused our efforts on offering as many different paths and avenues as possible to help you find your way to an illustration, whether you are looking for something specific or browsing randomly. The many links organizing content by artist, language, publisher, date of birth, and more are designed to make searching easier and indecision rewarding." Access by artist, engraver, format, publisher, technique, title. General and advanced search options. Advanced search can be filtered by broad categories, such as buildings, animals, plants, people, etc. Be sure to read the Terms of Use page, a link at the bottom of the entry page.
Ordnance Survey is Britain's mapping agency. Timepix Historic Photos Site, link here, launched in spring, 2018 and makes some OS history available online for the first time. Over 21,000 photos catalogue the Manchester streets between the 1940s and 1960s, giving a unique insight into the city’s past captured by OS surveyors. You can also find and purchase sheet maps here for travelling around the UK. OS refers those wanting historical maps to the map units of the British and Bodleian Libraries, Cambridge University Libraries, National Library of Scotland, Library of Trinity College, Dublin, and National Library of Wales. Links to these libraries are in the Libraries' Sites section of this libguide; look within each for the map unit.
Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
The Centre has two complementary purposes: to contribute to the understanding of British art and architecture and to act as a research centre for scholars working in this field. They have a library of books, periodicals, pamphlets, theses, exhibit and auction catalogs, and an archives, including a photo archive. They publish British art history works, offer programs, and grants/scholarships to scholars wishing to utilize their facilities and collections.
This is the UK’s only museum entirely dedicated to sharing the stories of the revolutionaries, reformers, workers, voters and citizens who championed, then and now, for change and rallied for rights and equality. They work alongside the communities whose stories the museum tells and through an eclectic and colourful, historic and contemporary collection that features banners, badges, posters, artwork, cartoons, placards, personal items and more, spanning four centuries of ideas worth fighting for.
Home of University of Oxford's ethnographic and archaeological collections. Virtual exhibits here.
Website from British Museum and National Museum Wales contains info on about 700,000 ancient artifacts found by the populace in England and Wales. Coins, tools, jewelry, vessels, etc. Has publications, guides, research help. Search or browse. Images of items.
Prince Albert: His Life and Legacy
From Royal Collection Trust. Contains over 17,500 digitized documents and photographs, most not published before. Highlights Albert's influence on British culture and society and his patronage of the arts, including photography and his love of the painter Raphael. Explore section offers "specific themes, biographies, and media that contextualize his life and times" with visual essays and interactive timeline. Will contain 23,000 items, when finished, by end of 2020.
Quad Royal: British Post War Posters and Graphics
Quad Royal are posters measuring 40" x 50". These were created for advertising on railroad or Tube (subway) trains. Useful for studying the evolution/history of graphic design in the mid 20th c.
Humphry Repton was a famous English landscape designer of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. We have his works in Special Collections. His famous "red books" showed customers how to improve the looks of their estates with building and planting alterations. This web site shows "before and after" views, digitizing some of the images from his famous Red Books. A project done at University of New South Wales in Australia.
Redress of the Past Historical Pageants in Britain
A grant funded project that examines historical pageants in twentieth-century Britain. The website contains a database about historical pageants in England, featured pageants, a couple of films, and some exhibits online.
"Restore Trust is a forum where members, supporters and friends of the National Trust can discuss their concerns about the future of the charity. While we all cherish days out at National Trust properties given to us by our membership card, we also value coming together for a greater cause, that of preserving, enjoying and understanding our built and natural heritage, and leaving them to the next generation in a good condition. We want the National Trust to go from strength to strength while doing what it does best: looking after historic buildings, interiors, artefacts, gardens and countryside to the highest standard, drawing on a wide range of expertise, while making these places accessible to everyone."
RIBApix: Royal Institute of British Architects
Provides images from the collections of the British Architectural Library at the Royal Institute of British Architects, the world’s most extensive visual archive devoted to architecture. Covers world architecture of all periods together with related subjects such as interior design, landscape, topography, planning, construction and the decorative arts. Many of the images are also of social documentary importance. Search. Browse. Copyrighted images, but download of low resolution copies may be done for personal use or teaching. Connection offered to the B.L. Architectural Library catalog, also.
It is a research project exploring life and culture in London around the turn of the nineteenth century using Richard Horwood’s pioneering Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, and Parts Adjoining Shewing Every House (published between 1792 and 1799). The site is based around two digital version of Horwood’s Plan: the original version and William Faden’s 1819 fourth edition (which shows the considerable changes that occurred in the early nineteenth century). Both of these are laid over modern maps of the city, allowing for detailed examinations and comparisons.
This link goes to their Picture Library, which is described thusly: "the [U.K.] Royal Collection contains world-famous and historically significant works of art, including paintings and miniatures, drawings and watercolours, prints and photographs, furniture, sculpture, jewellery, porcelain, clocks, and arms and armour. [We] can supply thousands of images across the entire range of the Royal Collection in a variety of formats including digital. team of researchers will respond promptly and efficiently to client requests. All our images are consistently quality controlled, and we are always happy to discuss projects with clients and make further suggestions. The online Picture Library currently only shows a proportion of the works that have been photographed. New additions are frequently being added to the website, but please do not hesitate to contact the Picture Library if you are unable to fulfil your order online." PLEASE NOTE: THEIR IMAGES ARE NOT FREE. The site contains forms and instructions for ordering.
Royal College of Physicians Museum and Archive Collections
Search RCP collections to uncover a wealth of information on the history of medicine and the RCP. Near complete records of the RCP's activities for 500 years. Manuscripts and personal papers of eminent physicians. 300 oil and sculptural portraits of physicians and over 5,000 prints and drawing. Silver and decorative art collection. Rare medical instruments and artefacts.
Drawing is a primary language. It is a crucial route to innovation across the creative disciplines and beyond, from fashion, fine art and animation to filmmaking, product design and engineering. Open to all. The Royal Drawing School runs over 350 different full and part-time drawing courses each year for adults and children of all ages and abilities. An independent charity / All our courses are heavily subsidised, with a wide range of scholarships, bursaries and concessions making them accessible to all, regardless of background or circumstance. Scholarship programmes / Alongside our public courses we offer a postgraduate-level programme in drawing, fully-funded international artists' residencies and places on our Young Artists programme for 10-18 year-olds with an aptitude for drawing. Distinguished drawing faculty / Our courses are taught by a specialist faculty of over 75 practising artists, and we are committed to the continued training of future teachers of drawing.Studios / We operate from our main campus in Shoreditch, East London and we also collaborate with a number of institutions including The National Gallery, The British Museum and the Royal Academy.
SSC is a free online database of digital images, sponsored and hosted by ARTStor, one of MSU LIbraries' paid e-resources (see our Fine Arts Library webpage) working with partners such as university and association art collections, to put up their images on the internet. Boolean keyword searching with limiting by geography, date, collection, or specialized subject classification. Uses ARTStor metadata.
Teaching History with 100 Objects
Search by topic, date, place, theme, or select a picture from the home page. Each object has a brief annotation, as well as categories of additional info: "about", bigger picture, teaching ideas, "for the classroom." Helps bring history to life.
Aims to make the resources of the various University of Oxford libraries and museums accessible for teaching and research through digitization (both 2D and 3D). Bodleian. Ashmolean. More. Under "Discover" find various thematic collections.
University of St. Andrews Photographic Archive
St Andrews University Library holds one of the largest and most important collections of historic photography in Scotland, stemming primarily from the fact that St Andrews played a vital role in the development of the photographic process, through the early interest of Sir David Brewster and his friendship with William Henry Fox Talbot. Over 300,000 images. The photographs available on this web site are a cross-section of the whole collection - a sample which will be regularly increased in size until virtually the whole collection will be searchable from remote sites.
V&A Images is the versatile picture agency of the Victoria and Albert Museum with an ever-expanding collection including the Theatre Collections, Museum of Childhood and the National Art Library. The Victoria and Albert is one of the world's great museums of design in the western world.
VADS (Visual Arts Data Service)
Digital images and resources for students and scholars of art history and social studies. The organization is based at University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, England. Image catalogue can be browsed thematically and span a wide range of time and place. Under Resources also is the Learning Index which can also be browsed to find educational materials on visual materials from its collection. Collections of note included are Designing Britain: Design Archives at University of Brighton, Imperial War Museum: Posters of Conflict, and Netherlands Decorated Books Collection: London College of Communication.
Victorian Illustrated Shakespeare Archive
Look for published illustrations of Shakespeare's characters, by name. Look for illustrations by genre (comedy, history, or tragedy). Or by illustrator/editor (illus. found in books of the period). Or by location (interior or exterior). Or by title of the play. Or for illus. in preliminary materials (such as title pages of books). Or by act or act header. Author of site is a faculty member at Univ. of Cardiff.
Over 100,000 high resolution images including manuscripts, paintings, etchings, early photography and advertisements are now freely available from the Welcome Institute for the History of Medicine.The images range from ancient medical manuscripts to etchings by artists. The earliest item is an Egyptian prescription on papyrus, and treasures include exquisite medieval illuminated manuscripts and anatomical drawings.
We might have romantic notions about country life being beneficial for wellbeing and sometimes this is the case. However, life in the village and on the land can also be characterised by stress and heartache. In this online exhibition you will find just a few examples of different ways in which rural practices impact on physical and mental wellbeing as well as contemporary first-hand accounts of what it’s like to live in rural Britain. This exhibition was co-developed with a number of Museum of Rural Life (MERL) volunteers, the Farming Community Network and Ridgeline. Hosted by University of Reading.
Site layers data from 19th c. tithe maps, which helped administer land-use payments over a modern geographic interface to create detailed representation of Wales over time. Useful for finding places also.
William Blake (1757–1827) was an English printmaker, painter, and poet whose work went largely unrecognized during his lifetime. Blake is now recognized as a seminal poet of the Romantic Age and his visual art is now as well-known as his poetry. The William Blake Archive, founded in 1996, furnishes unified access to Blake’s literary and visual art. The toolbar on the archive’s landing page describes the broad panoply of Blake’s works: “Illuminated Books,” “Commercial Book Illustrations,” “Separate Prints and Prints in Series,” “Drawings and Paintings,” and “Manuscripts and Typographic Works.” The tab “All Works” lists these works both in alphabetical order and in order of date of publication.
William Smith (1769-1839) was a land surveyor, mineral prospector, and geologist best known for his 1815 geological map of England and Wales and his maps of individual English counties between 1819-1824. Explore his and others' historical and geological maps here. A joint project of National Museum of Wales, Stanford University, University of Nottingham, and Oxford University Museum of National Geography.
Oldest Liverpool museum, founded 1853. Contains: antiquities, 80,000 artefacts from across the ancient world; 40,000 19th century objects reflecting world cultures; over a million specimens of natural history; and a collection of scientific instruments and objects relating to astronomy, space, particle physics, and oceanography.
See annotation above in this section for British Pathe.
Sir Christopher Wren, 1632-1723, famous architect esp. of churches built in London after the Great Fire, 1666, is commemorated in 2023, 300 years later. Site has a biography and bibliography of him, map, plus pictures. Joint effort of Church of England Diocese of London, Georgian Group, Old Royal Naval College Greenwich, Royal Hospital Chelsea, and RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects).