Where to get a good copy of a famous painting?
November 22, 2014 3:20 PM   Subscribe

There is a 19th century portrait of a somewhat famous distant ancestor that I'd like to get my own version of. The portrait is held by a museum but not at all a famous piece of artwork, it is noteworthy because of its subject. Where (or who) can I pay an appropriate amount of money to get a very good copy of a 19th century oil painting?

I've actually already ordered an oil painting copy of an original piece of artwork from 1st Art Gallery in China. The result was decent enough to hang in my house, but in no way was anywhere close to a copy of the original - I definitely would not order from them again and was pretty disappointed with my experience (if you're considering purchasing from them, send me a message and I'd be happy to share a photo of what I got and what the artwork was supposed to look like).

Related - what would an appropriate sum of money be? This is a (roughly) 18x20 oil painting. I assume the sky's the limit, but if I'm looking for a decent copy that might fool casual observers (I'm not going to pass it off as original, but would like to put it in a period frame and enjoy it as a copy that looks like it could be real) but wouldn't fool art aficionados and certainly wouldn't fool dealers, museums, etc.
posted by arnicae to Media & Arts (2 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
My best friend is an oil painter and does commissions. Depending on size and relative complexity you are probably talking about $1500 and up.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 3:35 PM on November 22, 2014


I bought an awesome copy of a Francoise Nielly painting from a shop in Saigon / Ho Chi Minh City called Minh Anh Gallery. It cost US$30, and the canvas is about 900mm x 900mm. They said that I could email a picture, they would do the painting and they would post it.

They make the paintings by digitally printing on the canvas very lightly, almost transparently, then painting over the top. All of the paintings in the shop looked great to my uneducated eyes.
posted by trialex at 12:32 AM on November 25, 2014


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