I want a museum.

July 3, 2015 2:34 PM

Where can I get a museum quality reproduction? Say I'm willing to spend a few hundred to a few thousand. The piece I'm currently lusting over is The Siren or The Green Abyss by Santorio. (You can see a picture of it here, may be NSFW). The painting is much more striking in person than the photograph shows. There are plenty of other paintings I would potentially be interested in getting reproductions of.

In my ideal world, it is the same size as the original and comes with the same frame. (I have a picture of the frame.) But I can also get it framed locally, easily enough.

I've done a cursory search online, but it is not obvious which companies offer what I want, or is any good. (Or maybe there's a person who does this who does not have a bit online presence?) Many of the companies will offer famous paintings only, and this is not one of them.

I have concerns about quality, as they would probably not have access to the original to be able to accurately recreate it. (I would like it recreated down to the brush stroke, and various layers.) I saw it in the Louvre, as part of a temporary exhibit. Some of these sites say "hand-painted" (which I don't really care about, other than how it affects quality) and some other sites say that "hand-painted" can mean that a person put one stroke on at some point, by hand.

Has anyone done this before? Which service would you recommend?

Bonus points if there's a service that does this for famous statues/sculptures.

posted by ethidda to Media & Arts (7 answers total)

Museums own the rights to the works in their collections, usually (living artists own their own works, of course.) So, unless the museum has contracted with a company to make and sell posters, postcards, printed reproductions of this painting, it's not likely that you'll find a well-done reproduction for sale.
There's lots of copies of works of art around--Crayola carved as David, Moses as bookends, Monet mousepads, etc..
You could find an artist who would copy it for you but unless that artist is working from the the real painting, you might not be happy with the results.
posted by Ideefixe at 2:47 PM on July 3, 2015

Response by poster: Sorry, Sartorio, not Santorio. Blegh.

And I saw it at Musee d'Orsay, not the Louvre.
posted by ethidda at 3:23 PM on July 3, 2015

In Part Two of this article, the author discusses ordering a copy of a Vermeer painted in China. YMMV.
posted by Yorrick at 4:15 PM on July 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

What about this one?
posted by stellathon at 4:34 PM on July 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

i know this doesn't help, but, there's a service that museums provide to collectors from whom they borrow artworks for exhibits. say MoMA wants the Picasso that hangs in your bathroom for a show. They will then proceed to have it meticulously photographed and then printed, life-size on a canvas so that your decor won't be interrupted. these are surprisingly convincing and realistic, sans the three-dimnesionality of brush strokes. i doubt you can buy something that is so faithful a reproduction but they do exist.

those hand-painted, chinese reproductions are really not that great.
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 5:21 PM on July 3, 2015

I have a giclee print of Female Head La Scapigliata, it is absolutely beautiful. I highly recommend Giclee prints.
posted by JujuB at 7:26 PM on July 3, 2015

I didn't find Sartorio in a search here, but this online shop, 1000 museums, has a great selection of fine art prints licensed by leading museums and collections.
posted by incolorinred at 10:23 PM on July 4, 2015