About

Oil Painting Reproductions publishes guides on a single subject. Not decor generally, not prints generally — reproductions of existing paintings, made in oil on canvas, and the market that sells them.

That market is unusually hard to read. The same painting is sold as a $59 print, a $250 hand-painted canvas and a $2,000 commission, often with the same photograph on the listing. Lead times are quoted in days by sellers who need weeks. Words with precise meanings in the trade — after, studio of, circle of — are used loosely by sellers who benefit from the confusion.

• What a reproduction is, and what the trade's four attribution labels actually mean.
• How one is painted, stage by stage, and why the drying time cannot be compressed.
• What it costs, at what size, and what makes one studio's price differ from another's.
• Which studios publish enough about themselves to be judged, and how they score.
• Where the law sits: what is legal to reproduce, and what crosses into fraud.

Every price, dimension, lead time and score on this site carries the source it came from and the date it was collected. A number that could not be verified is not printed — the gap is stated instead. Prices move; a figure with no date is a figure with no meaning.

Studio comparisons use ten documented criteria. Editorial ratings and ranking order are judgments, not averages of those criteria. The criteria and their sources are published in how we review.

Some links to retailers earn a commission, at no cost to the reader. More information about these links is in the affiliate disclosure, and the correction and update rules are in the editorial policy.