I enjoyed perusing the online art collection from the Freer Art Gallery in DC the other day. It is called the Arthur Sackler, etc, etc, something or other, but it was the Freer fifty years ago. It is actually part of the Smithsonian so that’s where you find the public domain pictures. The rules for public domain aren’t quite as clear cut as the National Gallery of Art so while I am figuring that problem out, here’s what the National Gallery gave me for the prompt, “Maple leaves.”

And this.

Seaside Finch; and Grafs Finch or Bay-Winged Bunting. 1858.
Julius Bien (American 1826-1909), after John James Audubon (American, 1785 – 1851). Public domain, NGA, Washington DC

What this mysterious description of the artist means is, that Julius Bien did a lithograph of Audubon’s bird paintings in the 1850’s. The original folios were published in the early 1800’s. I saw a page from one of Audubon’s books in a museum in Norfolk many years ago. Audubon’s originals were probably 3 feet high and 4 feet wide. This page is somewhat smaller, being only 27 inches high by 40 inches wide, as I read the description, which is to say, Two feet high and three feet wide.

And I have no idea why a cue of maple leaves brought me this picture but it is lovely.

Header: The Trap, Toulouse-Lautrec, NGA, public domain.