Question about art in books

Try finding out whether or not someone else gets the royalties from the artwork, like a family member or someone like that. If not, I don't think there would be a problem as long as you credited the artwork to him. Thats just my opinion though.

Artwork is governed by copyright the same as text. It is quite possible that there is an estate or organization that controls the rights to his work. You need to look into it.

Youngblood said:

I have written and designed a book that uses art work by the late Gustav Dore (he illustrated the Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost). My question is if this is legal or not, considering the man has been dead for a long time. Do I need permission or can I just attribute the art work to him in the book?

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His original work is long since out of copyright protection. Anything before 1923 is no longer covered.

This does not mean you can copy his art from a book and use that. While his original art is no longer covered by copyright, and book written since 1923 almost certainly is still under copyright protection, including the illustrations.

So where and how you get the artwork for the book means everything.

I would begin with contacting the museums that own the art.

Also, I'd look into what Mario Vargas Llosa did for his book, "In Praise of the Stepmother".

But, that's just me.

Hi Youngblood. Copyright can be a complicated issue. My guess is that Dore's work is most probably in public domain. The next issue is where you get the images. A museum or publisher might require permission. Even though they don't own the original copyright, they may want at least credit if not a license fee. That said, I suggest you take a look at this site: http://littleprofessor.typepad.com/the_little_professor/2006/05/gustave_dor_lin.html
That doesn't look right, underlines between gustave and dor and lin
She has a big collection of Dore etchings, including Paradise Lost, The Inferno, lots of others, many available in high resolution. If you hve questions you could ask her.

Hope this helps.