# Get an artist

> One illustrator by slug.

- **Endpoint**: `GET /v1/artists/{slug}`
- **Cost**: 1 credit
- **Minimum plan**: free
- **Cache-Control**: `public, max-age=60, s-maxage=300, stale-while-revalidate=600`

Source: https://pokemontcgapi.com/docs/api/artists/get

To list the cards, search them: `GET /v1/cards?q=artist:"Mitsuhiro Arita"`. One code path for filtering, sorting and paging instead of two.

## Path parameters

| Name | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `slug` **required** | string | — | Slug as returned by the list endpoint. Not free text — "Mitsuhiro Arita" is not a slug. |

## Headers

| Name | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `X-Api-Key` **required** | string | — | Your API key. `Authorization: Bearer <key>` is accepted as an alias. |
| `If-None-Match` | string | — | Send back the `ETag` you stored. The API returns a strong ETag on every catalogue response, and a 304 is a header exchange: no body, no database row read. |

## Example request

**curl**

```bash
curl -s "https://api.pokemontcgapi.com/v1/artists/mitsuhiro-arita" \
  -H "X-Api-Key: $PTCG_API_KEY"
```

**TypeScript**

`request.ts`

```ts
const url = new URL("https://api.pokemontcgapi.com/v1/artists/mitsuhiro-arita");

const res = await fetch(url, {
  headers: { "X-Api-Key": process.env.PTCG_API_KEY ?? "" },
});

if (!res.ok) {
  const { error } = await res.json();
  throw new Error(`${error.code}: ${error.message} (${error.request_id})`);
}

const { data, meta } = await res.json();
```

**Python**

`request.py`

```python
import os, httpx

res = httpx.get(
    "https://api.pokemontcgapi.com/v1/artists/mitsuhiro-arita",
    headers={"X-Api-Key": os.environ["PTCG_API_KEY"]},
)
res.raise_for_status()
payload = res.json()
```

## Example response

`200 OK` · `Cache-Control: public, max-age=60, s-maxage=300, stale-while-revalidate=600`

`response.json`

```json
{ "slug": "mitsuhiro-arita", "name": "Mitsuhiro Arita", "card_count": 760 }
```

## Errors

Every error body carries `error.code`, `error.message` and `error.request_id`. Switch on the code, never on the message.

| Status | Code | When |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 401 | `MISSING_API_KEY` | No `X-Api-Key` header and no bearer token on a route that requires one. |
| 401 | `INVALID_API_KEY` | The key does not match any account. |
| 404 | `ARTIST_NOT_FOUND` | No artist with that slug. |

The full taxonomy, with what to do about each code, is on the [errors](https://pokemontcgapi.com/docs/errors) page.