Is Egon Schiele Public Domain? Prints, Drawings and Images

Yes for the twelve Schiele works examined here, in the European Union, United Kingdom, Türkiye, and United States. Their selected museum images are available under CC0. For another drawing or print, check when it was published and which image you intend to use.

Schiele died in 1918. That date resolves the ordinary life-plus-70 term in the markets checked here. The U.S. answer also needs publication evidence: this guide uses documented 1910 issues, a 1922 portfolio, and one drawing reproduced in a 1917 volume.

The short answer

Eleven selected images come from The Metropolitan Museum of Art and one from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Met objects include three 1910 Wiener Werkstätte lithographs and eight impressions from the 1922 portfolio Das graphische Werk von Egon Schiele. Cleveland’s Portrait of a Child (Anton Peschka Jr.) is a drawing reproduced as plate 10 in the 1917 volume Zeichnungen Egon Schiele, published by Richard Lanyi.

The museums identify the objects and provide Open Access or CC0 labels for the selected images. Those labels cannot be transferred to an uncatalogued drawing, a later facsimile, or a file whose source is unknown.

Copyright in the EU, UK, and Türkiye

The ordinary rules checked are the EU term directive, UK government duration guidance, and Article 27 of Türkiye’s Law No. 5846. Each uses life plus 70 years for the relevant economic rights in an artistic work. Because Schiele died in 1918, his established works passed those ordinary terms decades ago.

Market checked	Ordinary rule applied	Result for established Schiele works
European Union	author’s life plus 70 years	public domain
United Kingdom	70 years after the creator’s death	public domain
Türkiye	life plus 70 years for economic rights	public domain

That conclusion does not waive attribution duties, museum access conditions, trademarks, privacy, cultural-property controls, or rights in a creative modern restoration.

Why 1918 does not answer the U.S. question

U.S. duration for older material often depends on publication history. The Copyright Office explains that distributing a visual work or authorised copies can publish it, while a public display alone does not necessarily do so. A date written on a drawing records creation, not automatically distribution.

In 2026, works published before 1931 have passed the maximum 95-year published-work term. Section 303 preserves a different path for works that were still unpublished at the start of 1978 and a 2047 floor for certain works first published by the end of 2002. That is why this guide uses explicit issue or reproduction records instead of turning Schiele’s death date into a universal U.S. answer.

Understanding the 1922 portfolio

Eight Met sheets are exact impressions from a portfolio issued in 1922, four years after Schiele’s death. The catalogue data distinguishes the date of a design from the date of the impression used here. Girl, for example, is a 1918 design represented by a 1922 portfolio sheet.

This distinction matters beyond copyright. A posthumous portfolio has an editor, publisher, production history, sequence, paper, and individual accessions. It should not be labelled simply “Schiele, 1918” if the object being reproduced is the 1922 impression.

What about Schiele’s drawings?

A Schiele drawing dated 1915 may be outside life-plus-70 terms in Europe and still need a U.S. publication investigation. Exhibition alone is insufficient; a catalogue reproduction, distributed photograph, sale of the original, or other authorised distribution may provide evidence, but each fact must be documented.

The Cleveland child portrait is included because its institutional record cites a 1917 reproduction in a named volume. That bounded fact does not clear every drawing in the same collection. When no comparable evidence exists, the responsible answer is “verify,” not “probably old enough.”

Check the museum image’s terms

The depicted work and its digital surrogate are two layers. The Met marks eligible Public Domain object images as Open Access under CC0; Cleveland also releases eligible collection files under CC0. The UK IPO’s digital-image notice is a useful reminder that a scan or photograph must be checked independently.

The images shown here come from the linked museum records and were resized and converted to WebP without cropping. If you choose a colourised scan, a book reproduction, or an auction photograph, check that file’s source and terms separately.

Twelve works to compare

The twelve illustrated records below let you compare three kinds of object: a print issued during Schiele’s lifetime, a posthumous portfolio impression, and a drawing known through an early reproduction. Each links to the museum page for that particular sheet.

Pay attention to the two dates in a portfolio caption. One may describe Schiele’s design; the other tells you when the sheet in front of you was printed. Keeping both makes a reproduction easier to identify and credit.

A practical Schiele reuse checklist

1. Identify the precise object, date, medium, institution, and accession.
2. Treat a design date and the date of a posthumous impression separately.
3. For a U.S. use of a drawing, preserve evidence of authorised publication or distribution.
4. Save the exact museum source-file URL and current rights label.
5. Credit editors, publishers, printers, and portfolio titles where the record names them.
6. Document any crop, restoration, colour change, compositing, or format conversion.
7. Recheck attribution, privacy, moral-rights, trademark, access, and endorsement questions.

Keep exploring

Use the linked museum pages to find the selected images. GeMarkt does not currently offer a Schiele collection, product, or download room.

If a drawing’s history is unclear, How to research an artwork explains how to build a source trail. How to cite art and images helps you preserve the object, edition, and image credits in a caption.