4,800 Welsh Portraits added to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata | Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

"Over the last 4 years the National Library of Wales has worked with Wikimedia to provide open access to more than 10,000 public domain images. These include the Welsh Landscape Collection, photographs, maps and manuscripts. This partnership has led to more than 455 million views of Wikipedia articles containing National Library images to date. The National Library of Wales has now placed nearly 5000 portrait prints, photographs and paintings in the public domain on Wikimedia Commons. The Library hopes that volunteers will be encouraged to create Wikipedia articles about the Welsh sitters, artists, printers and photographers involved in the collection. These are portraits of many of the leading citizens of Wales over the past few centuries. The oldest portraits are paintings while later ones are photographs. If you have Welsh ancestry, you might be fortunate enough to find a portrait of an ancestor or other relatives in this collection. Some of these people went to other countries. When browsing through the portraits, I saw a number of them listed as achieving great things in Canada, Australia, and elsewhere. For instance, the above portait is of Peter Jones who is listed as “Missionary to the Chippeway Indians, Upper Canada, North America.” You can read more in the Library of Wales’ announcement at https://blog.library.wales/?p=17811. The portraits are available at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:National_Library_of_Wales_Portrait_Archive."