Free · public-domain art · runs in your browser
Choose Your 9 Favorite Artworks
Search public-domain paintings and prints from the Art Institute of Chicago, pick your nine, and export a shareable 3×3 art collage with full source credits.
Drag to reorder · moves save automatically · Draft saved in your browser
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Select all nine to unlock exports
Search public-domain artworks
The search box above queries the Art Institute of Chicago's open-access API, live. Type an artist — Monet, Hokusai, Rembrandt — or a title like Water Lilies or Great Wave, and real catalog entries come back with artist, date and image. Searching artworks this way is how curators work: start from a name, follow what the collection holds. Every one of these artworks is public domain, verified against the museum's own rights flag on every request: in-copyright paintings never appear here, which is why these artworks can be shown, exported and previewed in full without legal asterisks. Works without a digital image are skipped rather than shown as broken frames.
Below the grid, the Not sure what to pick? panel ranks a curated wall of verified artworks by art style and era: tap Impressionism and late-1800s and the great canvases of the 1870s–1890s surface; tap Renaissance for old-master artworks, or Ukiyo-e for the Japanese prints that shocked Paris. Every suggestion is one of the real, public-domain artworks from that hand-reviewed wall.
Explore artists and art styles
A grid of nine artworks is a tiny museum you curate yourself. The classic hang is one style, one wall: nine impressionist landscapes glowing together, or a Renaissance row of altarpieces and portraits among your artworks. The bolder hang mixes centuries — a Hokusai wave beside a Monet garden it helped inspire, a Dürer engraving against a Whistler nocturne — and lets the styles argue. Center square logic applies like everywhere on this site: the one artwork you would rescue from a fire goes in the middle.
Style and era are the two filters the suggestion panel offers, because they are the two axes museums themselves hang artworks by. If you already know the artist, search beats every filter — the catalog holds thousands of public-domain artworks, from famous canvases to prints and drawings you have never seen.
Build a nine-artwork gallery grid
- 1. Fill nine frames. Search artworks, tap style and era in the suggestion panel, or open an example gallery below and remix it — every frame holds one of your chosen artworks. Drag works into position on desktop, nudge with arrow buttons on mobile, and choose from six themes — paper, dark, cream, vinyl, neon and red.
- 2. True proportions, never cropped. These artworks keep their real aspect ratios inside each frame — a wide seascape stays wide, a tall portrait stays tall. No artworks are stretched or center-cropped to fit a square. Add a title, subtitle and handle, and turn on names for viewers who are still learning the canon.
- 3. Export with source credits. Download a 1080×1080 square, a 1800×2100 poster or a 1080×1920 story — rendered in your browser, free, no watermark, no account. Because these artworks are public domain, the share link and social preview also use the real images of the artworks. Each pick keeps its credit: tap the ⓘ on any frame for the artwork, artist and its page at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Gallery examples you can remix
These example galleries are real, live posters built from actual public-domain artworks — not mockups of artworks that do not resolve. Tap Use this grid on any of them and the editor opens with all nine artworks loaded, ready to rearrange, retitle and export as your own.
An Impressionist Morning
Monet, Cassatt, Renoir, Caillebotte and Degas — the light, the streets and the studios that changed what paintings were allowed to be.
Use this grid →
Masters & Printmakers
Van Gogh, Seurat, Hokusai and Hiroshige — the post-impressionists and the Japanese masters whose prints they collected obsessively.
Use this grid →
Old Masters Gallery
Rembrandt, Botticelli, Dürer, Rubens and the Renaissance and Baroque rooms — five centuries of craft in nine frames.
Use this grid →Data sources & credits
Artwork records and images are provided by the Art Institute of Chicago open-access API. Every artwork on this page is public domain — free to view, download and share — and each pick carries its museum credit in the Details panel with a link to the work's official page. Not every collection's images are this clear to reuse: it is exactly why this grid exists. When you want a break from the canon, the books grid and anime grid are one click away, or browse every nine-grid template on the site.
FAQ about the artwork grid maker
Where do the artworks come from?
From the Art Institute of Chicago's open-access catalog, queried live. Every pick links back to the work's official museum page in its Details panel, and the credit travels with the artwork.
Are all images on this page public domain?
Yes. The museum's own public-domain flag is a hard filter on every search and a re-check on every resolve — in-copyright artworks simply never enter this grid. That is also why downloads and social previews use the real paintings.
Do the paintings get cropped to fit the grid?
Never. Artworks keep their true proportions inside each frame — the grid adapts to the painting, not the other way around — in every theme and all three export sizes, for all artworks.
Can I share my art grid with a friend?
Yes — once all nine artworks are chosen, Copy Link builds a URL that reopens your exact artworks on any device. Friends can remix the artworks, swap one painting, and export their own poster in seconds.
Is the artwork poster really free?
Yes: every theme, all three export sizes, suggestions and link sharing are free with no watermark and no account. Everything renders in your browser and drafts stay on your device.
More nine-grid templates
My9Albums turns anything you love into a nine-square poster. Build the nine albums that made you, fill a reading shelf with nine favorite books, or browse every nine-grid template on the site — cards, Pokémon, anime, manga, games and more, same editor, same themes, same free exports.