The WebMuseum, Paris is a project to provide free access to several hundred images of famous Western paintings from the 1200s to the mid‐1900s with links to stylistic and art historical commentary. This virtual museum is the creation of the Paris‐based Web consultant and art enthusiast Nicolas Pinoch who has assembled this collection of public domain works of art from museums and private galleries around the world for educational and other non‐commercial uses (the photographers of the paintings have transferred their rights to the WebMuseum; and there are prohibitions against commercial use of the documents).
The SunSITE at the University of North Carolina is the sponsoring host of the WebMuseum; but there is a large network of mirror sites across the USA, Europe, Asia, and Australia; so users across the world can improve the speed of access by contacting the nearest site. The museum includes JPEG images of paintings, sketches, frescoes, and some sculptures by 181 artists from Europe and the USA, along with brief biographical and critical sketches. There are also essays on different periods and artistic styles from Gothic painting to Expressionism and Pop Art with hyperlinked cross‐references to artists and to individual works. Under‐graduate students and others interested in finding a general introduction to the history of art will find this site a useful reference resource.
The WebMuseum is organized into two special exhibitions on the life and work of Paul Cezanne and the pictures from a medieval French book of hours, Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry; a General Collection of important paintings; and Other Resources. The Cezanne exhibit includes over 100 of his paintings from different phases of his career and detailed commentary on the development of his style. This collection is the most comprehensive examination of an artist’s work in the WebMuseum.
The Très Riches Heures collection features interpretive glosses on the calendrical and symbolic significance of the Limbourg brothers’ famous illustrations, which are no longer on display to the public. The essays in this section can help users learn about the history and conventions of late medieval art.
The General Collection contains an alphabetical Artist Index, a Glossary of 12 major schools of painting, and a historically‐organized Themes Index. The essays are largely uncredited, many presumably written by Pinoch himself, although some are taken from the Encyclopedia Britannica Online, one of the WebMuseum’s partners, and are mostly in English (there are, however, a few essays in French in addition to some lengthy, untranslated quotations from French art critics). Thumbnail images of representative paintings by each artist appear alongside the text; and the user can enlarge them for better viewing or for downloading. The reproductions are generally good quality; but they suffer somewhat from the limited resolution of Web‐based graphics. The many cross‐references and links to other related artists and themes provided in the essays are easy to navigate and can help users situate each artist in his or her proper historical context.
The other resources available through the WebMuseum are a virtual tour of Paris with photographs and historical commentary by Pinoch, an Auditorium which provides access to sound clips from Classical compositions (some of these links are inactive), and links to general information about the WebMuseum project.
The one limitation of the WebMuseum is its predominantly Western orientation. Aside from a cursory examination of Japanese art in the thematic section, there is no discussion of non‐Western movements and few examples of art from other cultures. The site was created in March, 1994 and was last updated in 1996; so it is unlikely that any new artists or paintings from non‐Western traditions will be included to broaden the scope of the site. Nevertheless, the WebMuseum gathers together an impressive collection of works that are hard to locate in other electronic and even print sources. The site will not replace such standard print art history textbooks as Helen Gardener’s Art through the Ages or H. W. Jason’s History of Art in the depth of its coverage; and it lacks the speed associated with many of the CD‐ROM art‐history products available on the market today; but it can supplement those resources by giving students the ability to locate free information about art and artists from any computer with an Internet connection. Instructors may find the WebMuseum a valuable online alternative to slides for purposes of lectures. Any institution seeking to support a program in art or art history should provide a link to this valuable site.
