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The Birmingham Museum of art makes available digital images of works in the Museum’s collection believed to be in the public domain. Images are available free of charge for any use, commercial or non-commercial. Users do not need to contact the Museum for authorization to use these images. They are available through the Online Collection at artsbma.org/collection. See detailed instructions for specific work types below.

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Lion Cubs

Paul Wayland Bartlett

About 1895

The son of Truman Howe Bartlett, a noted art critic and sculptor, Paul Wayland Bartlett commenced his artistic studies in Paris at the age of 15, and by the age of 22 had won a medal at the Paris Salon. His success and reputation grew so rapidly that at the age of only 29, he was made a knight of the French Legion of Honor. His success abroad led to several major commissions in the United States, the most significant of which is the pediment he modeled for the House of Representatives at the U.S. Capitol known as The Apotheosis of Democracy (1908-1916). 


Bartlett is known not only as sculptor of the human figure, but also as an animalier, an artist specializing in the realistic depiction of animals. This work, portraying a pair of sleeping lion cubs, was exhibited in Paris in 1895. It is part of a group of five sculptures by Bartlett given to the Birmingham Museum of Art in 1958 by the artist’s stepdaughter, Caroline Peter.

See More of the Collection

This image is created with black ink on yellowed paper. It represents the façade of “The Bank for Savings & Trusts.” In the lower eighth of the image, there is an empty sidewalk and a small portion of the street.
In this circular, black and white print, two central figures wearing hats and slickers harvest buckets of lobsters. Over the shoulders of the figures are two small boats on the water carrying a lobster pot and rowed by single figures. Another man works to the right of the central figure on the right. At the left of the composition stands a pier with a small building covered in lobster pots. At the bottom of the print, a small still life includes a lobster, a lobster pot, and a buoy.
Rocky ocean coastline with a single tree growing out of an outcropping.
In this painting on paper, an abstract tree fills the sheet. It stretches between all four sides of the page, extending beyond the image. There is a tangle of branches in front of a background only alluded to by color. At the top of the sheet the artist suggests a sky of blue and pink tones, and at the bottom of the sheet a grassy ground is suggested through teal and green paint. The fields of color are defined by the tree branches. The painting is signed in the lower right, Sheeler - 1947."