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)

	本作品在其来源国以及其他著作权期限是作者逝世后70年或以下的国家和地区属于公有领域。 你必须增加美国公有领域标签显示为何这个作品在美国属于公有领域。  请注意少数国家的版权保护期为70年以上：墨西哥为100年，牙买加为95年，哥伦比亚为80年，危地马拉与萨摩亚为75年，而这些国家不实施较短期限法则，因此该图片可能在这些国家不被认为是公有领域。洪都拉斯的版权期限一般为75年，但该国实施较短期限法则。对于在第二次世界大战期间为法国利益战死的法国人（更多信息）、二战期间参与过苏德战争（俄罗斯称之为伟大的卫国战争）的俄罗斯人，以及苏联时期遭到镇压，而死后获得平反的牺牲者（更多信息），这些人的作品版权期限会有所延长。
	本文件已被确认为免除已知的著作权法限制（包括所有相关权利）。

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