Your Paintings: Uncovering the nation’s art collection

Found this fantastic resource that enables you to view entire art collections from the comfort of your own laptop, wherever you may be.

Of interest to me is the ability to look at the artworks from the remarkable collection at the Harris Museum & Art Gallery in Preston where many paintings feature local Preston scenes or portraits of figures from Preston’s past.

The site allows you to tag paintings, see which picture is on Twitter and even create your own guided tours.

I recommend you have a look at the Your Paintings website. It carries a health warning though. You may loose several hours of your life browsing through the thousands of images. Well worth it.

Your Paintings is a website which aims to show the entire UK national collection of oil paintings, the stories behind the paintings, and where to see them for real. It is made up of paintings from thousands of museums and other public institutions around the country.

The BBC Your Paintings site is in partnership with the Public Catalogue Foundation (PCF).

The PCF is a registered charity set up to create a complete record of the United Kingdom’s national collection of oil, tempera and acrylic paintings and make this accessible to the public.

As well as featuring art from the Harris Museum & Art Gallery you can also browse through collection at Preston Crown Court, Lancashire County Council County Hall and paintings at the University of Central Lancashire.

View the Harris collection online here:

Your Paintings at the Harris Museum