What is your all-time-favorite piece of art? As images of Salvador Dali telephones, Vincent Van Gogh stars and Stuart Davis pops of color swirl around your mind, imagine owning the actual work. Where in your home would you hang this masterpiece?

Lobster Telephone, 1936, sculpture by Salvador Dalí	The Starry Night, 1889, painting by Vincent van Gogh	Hot Still-Scape for Six Colors - 7th Avenue Style, 1940, painting by Stuart Davis	Blue and Green Music by Georgia O'Keeffe, 1921.

Such legendary pieces of art history will surely remain untouchable in museums that we might be lucky enough to visit. Most of us will never be able to afford any piece of art by our favorite legendary artists .Yet you don’t have to settle for college-dorm style poster prints on glossy paper. Many of these works are a part of the public domain and are available for reproduction! Meaning, you can actually own a giant, thick oily canvas of Edvard Munch’s The Scream to hang in your hallway, or O’Keeffe’s vibrant flowy flowers to perch above your bed.

So what does it mean for a piece of art to be in the “public domain”? It means that anyone can copy it without the permission of the artist and without paying a fee. The work belongs to the public as a whole, as our “intellectual property“.

A good rule of thumb for figuring out whether a piece of art is in the public domain or not is to find out when it was published. If the piece was published before 1923 is it most likely public domain in the United States. However it is important to note that art works often remain unpublished long after their creation date. So in addition to finding out the date it is key to do some extra copyright research. After all, many artists who find their art being used without their permission will take a corrective action.

A good way to conduct this research is to sift through the Creative Commons website and various other websites on public domain. You need to find a publication where the work was published with a date prior to 1923. If you don’t have time to research the painting yourself, the national copyright office offers a service of doing the research for you for $75 an hour. Of course you can always take your needs to outside consultants as well.

Another option when getting a well-known piece of art reproduced is to make it a derivative work. A derivative work is based on an artist’s piece but is not a verbatim-copy.

Perhaps you want to insert your face into a Van Gogh portrait, or you want to change the colors on Monet’s water lillies to drastic neons. Whatever your whimsy may be, a derivative work is an option in art reproduction. The original material that is added in the derivative does become protected and is not a part of the public domain.

The most reproduced piece of art of all time is Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Oil Painting Express would love to help bring Da Vinici’s enigmatic painting to your home or any other favorite painting or derivative that you can come up with. However it is up to you to do the copy-right research first, then we will re-create with museum quality the piece of art you’ve forever dreamed of hanging into your home.