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)

	本作品在其來源國以及其他著作權期限是作者逝世後70年或以下的國家與地區屬於公有領域。 你必須增加美國公有領域標籤顯示為何這個作品在美國屬於公有領域。  請注意少數國家的著作權保護期為70年以上：墨西哥為100年，牙買加為95年，哥倫比亞為80年，瓜地馬拉與薩摩亞為75年，而這些國家不實施較短期限法則，因此該圖片可能在這些國家不被認為是公有領域。宏都拉斯的著作權期限一般為75年，但該國實施較短期限法則。對於在第二次世界大戰期間為法國利益戰死的法國人（更多資訊）、二戰期間參與過蘇德戰爭（俄羅斯稱之為偉大的衛國戰爭）的俄羅斯人，以及蘇聯時期遭到鎮壓，而死後獲得平反的犧牲者（更多資訊），這些人的作品著作權期限會有所延長。
	此作品無已知的著作權限制，亦不受所有相關和鄰接的權利限制。

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