Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Longnose sawshark

Longnose sawshark

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 16 Aug 2011 at 06:56:27 (UTC)

Reason: In 1832 convict artist William Buelow Gould painted his Sketchbook of fishes while serving time at Macquarie Harbour Penal Station in Van Diemen's Land, the most brutal penal station in the British Empire (the equivalent to a contemporary artist painting such a work while serving at Guantanamo Bay). This sketchbook was recently inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. Interestingly, scientists today still use information from this sketchbook about some of the little known species it contains.

Over the last xmas break I was fortunate enough to gain release of some high-res scans from the original sketchbook for Wikipedia from the Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office; this is one of them. These are therefore high quality and high EV images. (Note: due to the historical significance of the images and sketchbook, I don't believe these should be 'restored'; the pages contain some marks and spots, but the images themselves are pretty clean.)
Articles in which this image appears: Longnose sawshark; William Buelow Gould
FP category for this image: Fish (and maybe Paintings?)
Creator: William Buelow Gould (1801 - 1853); Reproduction by the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office

Support as nominator --jjron (talk) 06:56, 7 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support (and I know "strong" is meaningless!), love it. I'd be happy for this to be promoted as either a picture of the fish or a picture of a work of art, but I think a choice should be made. J Milburn (talk) 15:33, 7 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support. I agree with the decision not to touch this up. Chick Bowen 19:30, 7 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: See an Australian news story on this collection. The original can also be found here. I'm a bit confused on the copyright status, the work is listed as public domain since the copyright has expired, yet the Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office reserves the right to ask for permission to use the image, which corresponds with what the nom says regarding permission. If the image may not be re-used without permission from Tasmania then it's not a free image. The caption in the image in the Gould article says "used here with permission of the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts", also implying the image is not free. So Tasmania seems to be releasing the image to WP, but not into public domain or GFDL, not that their release means anything since author is more than 70 years deceased. This may be more like a scan of original artwork than a published book; does that affect the copyright status?--RDBury (talk) 20:55, 7 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- There is no doubt that the original image is public domain, if the artist died in 1853. Many museums like to claim that their reproductions of public domain works are copyrightable. The official position of the Wikimedia Foundation is that such claims are impossible under US law. This probably should be tagged PD-art instead of PD-old, however. See commons:Commons:When to use the PD-Art tag for a lengthy discussion of the relevant issues. Chick Bowen 21:13, 7 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - Thanks, just wanted to be sure.--RDBury (talk) 09:49, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - I don't know about Australian law, but this is unambiguously public domain as far as both Commons and enwp are concerned. J Milburn (talk) 12:52, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      - FWIW the lady I dealt with said in the email: "Permission is granted to use the five images by Gould from the Sketchbook, on condition the same acknowledgement is made to: Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office." (I had got permission off her for some other stuff previously). I tagged the image page out of politeness with the extra stuff requesting permission for reuse be sought from TMHO as their own website does, but she never even requested me to do that, much less raised copyright issues. Realistically I think they just want to be sure they're being acknowledged as holding the original work, which I think is fair enough. --jjron (talk) 14:07, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        My concern was that material in WP doesn't stay in WP; it's mirrored and repackaged in all sorts of ways with the only requirement (from GFDL) that a link to the original article be given somewhere. So the only way the museum will be acknowledged is by following a trail of links. Whether it's fair or not it appears that WP's position is that we don't really need permission and we can't make any promises as to how the image is reused once it's used here. It's a pity in a way because we want museums to be motivated to scan public domain works and put them on the web, but we also like the fact that they're giving up any control over the works when they do. I think it's still a win for the museum though because more people will be seeing the Allport name than if they kept the book locked up in a case.--RDBury (talk) 00:01, 9 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support Don't think there are copyright issues. JJ Harrison (talk) 06:58, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support per nom. Aaadddaaammm (talk) 17:56, 9 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support with the assumption that there aren't copyright problems. I think this would be better under fish than paintings, but if it's possible for it to be in both categories, that seems OK with me. Pine^talk 04:28, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted File:Sketchbook of fishes - 25. (Longnose) Saw shark - William Buelow Gould, c1832.jpg --Makeemlighter (talk) 10:57, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]