Help me find the perfect public domain painting
January 27, 2022 1:29 PM   Subscribe

I'm looking for a painting (or paintings) that are in the public domain and depict festivals, feasts, villages, and other examples of both communal celebration and social connection. Ideally, these would be or evoke pre-Christian Europe, especially pre-Christian Celtic Europe, especially Ireland, but anything that's close is worth sharing. Thanks in advance!
posted by overglow to Media & Arts (9 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Even though they're later than your desired period and not Irish, the world of Flemish genre painting has much to offer.
posted by overeducated_alligator at 1:35 PM on January 27, 2022 [3 favorites]


Yeah, the first painting that popped into my mind was Bruegel's Peasant Dance (Kermess).
posted by praemunire at 1:55 PM on January 27, 2022 [2 favorites]


Try searching "roman mosaic feast" and similar?
posted by Caxton1476 at 2:12 PM on January 27, 2022


How about a medieval French tapestry?
posted by amtho at 2:13 PM on January 27, 2022 [2 favorites]


Herne's Oak. George Cruikshank, 1792–1878 .
You may have better hunting than me with the four Irish Quarter Days: Imbolc - Feb01, Beltane - May Day, Lughnasadh - Aug01 and Samhain - Hallowe'en)
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:42 PM on January 27, 2022


Nikolai Astrup did paintings of midsummer bonfires in Norway at the start of the C20th, like this and the top one here.
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 3:33 PM on January 27, 2022 [2 favorites]


Actually I think that first one is a woodblock, but there are painted versions as well. They should be public domain I think, he died in 1928, but whether you can find a high quality image is another question.
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 3:39 PM on January 27, 2022


The actual painting might be in the public domain, but that doesn’t mean that the photo of it isn’t under copyright. Are you reproducing it for profit or just want something to hang on a wall?
posted by Ideefixe at 4:11 PM on January 27, 2022 [3 favorites]


might be post-christianity, but this made me think of illuminated manuscripts. It's been 5 or 6 moves since the last time I knew where my copy of Medieval Art went, but that's what I saw in my mind's eye. Obvs post-Christian, but stained glass images and the bigger pictures that monks squeezed into texts were full of everyday life moments.
posted by adekllny at 5:58 PM on January 27, 2022


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