Can anyone find an open source image for Mary Chudleigh?

Question

I've just finished a profile for the Notable Restoration feminist poet and essayist Lady Mary Chudleigh. She's connected to the main tree (or should be when it updates) but I have struggled to find a picture of her! There are a few unattributed ones out on the web, but I can't find one I can use and be sure of not infringing copyright. Any ideas on how to find one?

Thanks

Comments

Commercial photography was not available until long after her death, but there may be a painting of her.

Answer 1

There is a tool in Google images to see if an image is free of use:

Go to Google images, type in the name.

Above the list of pictures click on "tools". A second line opens up. There go to "User rights" (or something similar, I don't know the English term).

"Usable to non-commercial re-use". This is what Wikitree needs.

Comments

That's brilliant, Jelena, thank you. I wish I'd known about that before trawling through hundreds of unusable images!

---

I've managed to find an open source illustration from one of her books using this method - so thank you again, Jelena.

Answer 2

In checking the internet, there were a number of paintings of Mary Chudleigh. If you do an internet search of Mary and click on images, you should find them.

Comments

Thank you Frank, I found several images of portraits, but they all seem to have been used without any attribution, so I suspect they have been used illegally. While I could contact the owners of the blogs on which they are used and ask permission, I feel it would be a fruitless exercise if they themselves do not have permission to use them. There are no images available on Wikipedia or Wikimedia, and I have been unable to find any website associated with the family or the family home. There is an image of a portrait Mary's entry on Find a Grave, and I have sent a message to the contributor regarding its provenance and my potential re-use, but what I really need to find is where there is an original portrait for which I can request permissions. 

When we upload images to Wikitree we are asked to

"Say where you got this image, e.g. if you took the photo, if it was scanned from a family collection, etc. This is required. If you found the image on another website explain why it is not copyrighted or how you obtained permission (images on Find A Grave and most other websites are copyrighted)."

I've tried the National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Albert Museum in Exeter... and really in asking this question I was hoping that someone might think of a potential repository I hadn't yet thought of!

Sally

Answer 3

I have put in a request to use the image from a site called mypoeticside:

https://mypoeticside.com/poets/mary-chudleigh-poems

We'll wait to see what they say. Normally when I tell them this is for genealogical purposes and not for commercial use, they are generally fairly good about granting approval. I have had a few rejections, but it never hurts to ask.

Comments

Thank you, Scott.

---

I would check that the portrait is actually Mary Chudleigh first.  It looks awfully like Sarah Churchill.  In fact several paintings purporting to show Mary Chudleigh on poetry sites are actually of other people...  Probably folks just took an image of a lady of the period to go with the poem.

---

Well... I took a look at a Google Search of images related to Mary Chudleigh, and while I'd agree that she looks a lot like Sarah Churchill, all the pictures of Mary look very similar to each other (some of different ages of her life, but still similar). And all of them look a lot like Sarah.

So either the artist who did Mary also did Sarah and just paints them all very similarly, or someone has indeed copied images of Sarah and passed them off as Mary. It is uncanny that they could easily be sisters if the images are indeed accurate.

---

What I find odd is that Wikipedia don't have an image. That makes me wonder if any of the others are genuine. I await Scott's reply from mypoeticside and mine from the Find A Grave contributor with interest! 

---

Well, she’s the wife of a baronet so there’s likely to be a painting of her somewhere.  But as she’s from deepest Devon it is unlikely to be a court painter.  I’d start with the Devon museums.