Determined to be public domain with the following rationale:

Keep, it's PD. This is a very complicated case, so bear with me. We know the painting was created before 1940, when the author died, and we know that The Mariners' Museum purchased the watercolor that same year. We know that MM displays it on the web here archive copy at the Wayback Machine with a blanket statement "All images are copyright of The Mariners' Museum", but that's clearly untrue, since some of the works they display are demonstrably in the public domain. (MM couldn't have ever held the copyright to this painting anyway unless Irwin Bevan's heirs legally transferred copyright to them, and since MM purchased the painting without knowing who created it, this is extremely unlikely.) That copyright statement refers to the digitization, which is irrelevant (since we're using a different digitization) and untrue (due to Bridgeman v. Corel).

Case law has shown that a painting is published when (a) copies or photographs are distributed to the public with the permission of the creator or heirs, (b) the work is put up for sale to the general public, or (c) the painting is displayed in a place where photographs may be taken, which tacitly gives permission for copies to be made. When MM purchased the paintings, were they up for sale to the general public at auction? If so, then the painting was first published without an affixed copyright notice before 1978, and is therefore in the public domain. If not, did MM display the painting in a place where photography was permitted? If so, again, it is in the public domain due to being published without a copyright notice prior to 1978. If it wasn't published until after 1978, the relevant law is § 303 of the Copyright Act of 1976, explained by the U.S. Copyright Office in this brochure in the "Works in Existence but Not Published or Copyrighted on January 1, 1978" section. Copyright is held until 70 years after the death of the author, or until 2003, whichever is later. Since it's now 2011, this work would be in the public domain regardless of when it was first published. – Quadell ^(talk) 17:21, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or fewer. You must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States.  Note that a few countries have copyright terms longer than 70 years: Mexico has 100 years, Jamaica has 95 years, Colombia has 80 years, and Guatemala and Samoa have 75 years. This image may not be in the public domain in these countries, which moreover do not implement the rule of the shorter term. Honduras has a general copyright term of 75 years, but it does implement the rule of the shorter term. Copyright may extend on works created by French who died for France in World War II (more information), Russians who served in the Eastern Front of World War II (known as the Great Patriotic War in Russia) and posthumously rehabilitated victims of Soviet repressions (more information).

This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights.

https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/PDMCreative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0falsefalse

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• 2011-05-23 05:17 (UTC) | XavierGreen | 41522 (bytes) | 615×404 | {{Information |Description = USS Constellation engaging la Vengeance |Source = Bailey Collection of watercolor views of U.S. Naval actions |Date = ~~~~~ |Author = Irwin John Bevan |Permission = Author died more than