In an article from The Guardian, art correspondent Mark Brown wrote, “The Public Catalogue Foundation [PCF], announced that it had succeeded, in partnership with the BBC, in its mission to put images of every publicly owned oil painting in the UK online – that means every painting, good or bad, on display or in stores, and whether owned by museums, galleries, councils or universities. Those held by police stations, zoos and a lighthouse are also included.”
The online collection recently made the news when an art historian using Your Paintings identified a previously unknown painting as the work of 17th Century master Van Dyck.
The PCF will continue to work on Your Paintings as there are still nearly 30,000 paintings which are unattributed and it wants to correct that. It is also planning a similar exercise for publicly owned sculpture.
You may browse the collection at Your Paintings’ website, and there is also a Tagger Project that invites users to participate and help to make Your Paintings more searchable.
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