How would you like to own these pictures?

By Trevor Coombs, Documentation Assistant – Fine Art

Earlier this year, Bristol Museum & Art Gallery licensed 2,300 digital images from the Fine Art collection to Bridgeman Images to sell on our behalf.

We’ve had a commercial relationship with Bridgeman stretching back to 1981 when, as one of their earliest clients, we licensed over 300 of our best known pictures.

This means our stock at Bridgeman now totals 2,650, including the whole of the Braikenridge Topographical collection (showing Bristol before the camera), nearly all of the British and European painting collections, and a selection of works on paper.

From BBC and Channel 5 documentaries, educational textbooks in France and scholarly publications in Italy, to high production value posters in Germany, religious calendars and greeting cards in the USA and fashion websites in London – our pictures have travelled right across the world, getting the collection known and bringing in much needed income to fund exhibitions, events and other services for the 1.1m people who visit Bristol Museums each year.

Over the coming months, we hope to add another 1,500 pictures from our other collections, including a selection of Japanese prints, some of the Adela Breton Mexican temple drawings, rare plant illustrations and a recently catalogued collection of bird illustrations.

In the longer term, the archive photographs of the British Empire and Commonwealth collection will also be added. Who knows where they’ll end up?

Recently, we linked the Bridgeman licensed images to our online collections. Search ‘Fine Art’ to view the images. If a picture is licensed to Bridgeman, click the link on the individual catalogue record page to go to the Bridgeman website.

There you can purchase a digital copy for your commercial, academic or personal use. Many of Bristol’s pictures at Bridgeman have also been uploaded to Art.co.uk, where print on demand reproductions can be ordered online. There’s even a framing service.

So the next time you’re wandering through our art galleries and you see a picture you’d like to own, you know where to go.

Images (from top to bottom):

• Unconscious Rivals, by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
• Still Life in Gozo, by Mary Fedden
• Pink Explosion, by Buff Monster
• View Down the Avon, by Samuel Jackson

Find out more:

• View our collections online
• Visit the Bridgeman images website
• Visit Art.co.uk