Freebase have a section of visual art data: here.
You can download an archive of the data: here.
Expanding the archive gives you the data as tab-separated files:
$ ls visual_art<br></br>art_acquisition_method.tsv artwork.tsv<br></br>art_owner.tsv color.tsv<br></br>art_period_movement.tsv visual_art_form.tsv<br></br>art_series.tsv visual_art_genre.tsv<br></br>art_subject.tsv visual_artist.tsv<br></br>artwork_location_relationship.tsv visual_art_medium.tsv<br></br>artwork_owner_relationship.tsv
Loading up R, we can parse the files and check some of the features of the data:
<tt>$ R --quiet<br></br>> <tt>artwork<-read.delim("./visual_art/artwork.tsv")</tt><br></br></tt><p>> artwork<-read.delim("./visual_art/artwork.tsv")
> names(artwork)
[1] "name" "id" "artist"
[4] "date_begun" "date_completed" "art_form"
[7] "media" "period_or_movement" "art_genre"
[10] "dimensions_meters" "art_subject" "edition_of"
[13] "editions" "locations" "owners"
[16] "belongs_to_series"
> artists<-artwork$artist[artwork$artist != ""]
> summary(artists)[1:20]
Henri Matisse John Gutmann Pablo Picasso
72 66 66
Ferdinando Ongania Vincent van Gogh Caravaggio
57 57 49
Raphael Claude Monet Dr. William J. Pierce
48 44 42
Alexander Girard Tina Modotti Martin Kippenberger
37 37 36
Alvin Langdon Coburn Thomas Annan Robert Adams
31 31 30
Paul Cézanne Edward Weston Martin Venezky
29 28 28
Paul Klee Willi Kunz
28 28
> media<-artwork$media[artwork$media != ""]
> summary(media)[1:20]
Gelatin silver print Oil paint Canvas,Oil paint
1110 897 429
Oil paint,Canvas offset lithograph Albumen print
429 221 185
Bronze Photogravure chromogenic print
138 127 104
Acrylic paint Synthetic polymer paint Ink
82 69 67
Graphite Screen-printing Wood
61 57 55
Daguerreotype Mixed Media Oil paint,Panel
39 39 37
Panel,Oil paint Marble
35 30
> gelatin_silver_print_artworks<-artwork[artwork$media == "Gelatin silver print" & artwork$artist != "",]
> summary(gelatin_silver_print_artworks$artist)[1:20]
Dr. William J. Pierce John Gutmann
78 41 34
Robert Adams Ilse Bing Edward Weston
30 27 26
Walker Evans Tina Modotti Dorothea Lange
20 19 18
Lee Friedlander Lewis Hine Garry Winogrand
16 16 14
Henry Wessel Nicholas Nixon Ansel Adams
13 13 12
Harry Callahan Pirkle Jones Arnold Genthe
11 11 10
Bill Brandt Lewis Baltz
10 10
</p>
A couple of quick checks of the data show that it has some biases relative to mainstream art history, with more photography and photographers than you might expect. And there are several different entries for oil painting, which have skewed the numbers. This is interesting data, but about the dataset rather than about art more generally at the moment. Perhaps art history data will be as useful for institutional critique as for historical research.