Which Irish art is in the public domain

People ask us this constantly, usually in one of two forms: can I legally print this Irish painting? or how are you allowed to sell prints of work in the National Gallery? This page answers both, plainly. It is not legal advice — we are a print studio, not solicitors — but the rule itself is simple and the dates are a matter of public record.

The rule in Ireland and the EU

Copyright in an artistic work lasts for the life of the artist plus seventy years, and it expires at the end of the seventieth calendar year after the year of death. In Ireland this is set out in the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000. So an artist who died in 1944 was in copyright through the end of 2014, and their work entered the public domain on 1 January 2015.

The count runs from the death of the artist, not from when the work was made. A painting finished in 1900 by someone who lived until 1955 was in copyright far longer than a painting finished in 1930 by someone who died in 1941.

Irish artists whose work is in the public domain now

Evie Hone entered the public domain on 1 January 2026 — she died in 1955, so 2026 is the first year her paintings and window designs can be freely reproduced in Ireland and the EU. She is the most recent addition to this list.

Irish artists still in copyright, and when that ends

The one people ask about most is Jack B. Yeats, who died in 1957 and whose work enters the public domain on 1 January 2028. Until then his paintings cannot be reproduced commercially without permission from the estate. Paul Henry follows on 1 January 2029. Anyone selling Jack B. Yeats or Paul Henry prints today is either licensed or infringing.

Three things that trip people up

The country matters. Life-plus-seventy is the rule in Ireland, the United Kingdom and the European Union. The United States works differently — its terms depend on when and whether a work was published, not only on when the artist died — so a work that is clearly public domain in Dublin may not be in Chicago, and the reverse also happens. If you are publishing internationally, check the rule where you are publishing.

The painting and the photograph of it are separate questions. The painting may be out of copyright while a particular photograph of it is claimed by whoever took it. Museums differ on this: some release images of public-domain works openly, others assert rights in their own reproductions. The safe route is to use an image whose licence you can point to, not simply an image of an old painting.

Words are not pictures. A line of poetry on a print is a reproduction of a literary work and follows the same life-plus-seventy rule as a painting. Seamus Heaney died in 2013, so his poems are in copyright until the end of 2083, and printing a line commercially needs permission from the estate through his publisher. This catches a lot of people who assume a short quotation must be fine.

Why this matters for what we sell

Every historical work we print is by an artist in the first table. That is not a coincidence — it is the constraint the catalogue is built around. For the works whose originals are held by the National Gallery of Ireland, with dates, media, dimensions and accession numbers, see National Gallery of Ireland works we print. For the artists themselves, see Irish artists we print.

Every print is open edition, made to order and shipped worldwide.

Buy Irish Art is a small Irish studio in Glasthule, County Dublin, trading since 2016.