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Oil Painting Reproductions

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Irises reproduction: the painting that has already changed colour

Van Gogh's Irises is 74.3 x 94.3 cm at the Getty. The flowers were violet before the red faded. What a copy should reproduce, and what it costs.

Oil Painting ReproductionsUpdated

Vincent van Gogh's Irises: a bed of blue irises with green sword-shaped leaves, one white bloom at the left, against red-orange earth.
Vincent van Gogh, Irises, May 1889. Oil on canvas, 74.3 × 94.3 cm. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, inv. 90.PA.20. Wikimedia Commons, public domain

The short answer

Oil on canvas, 74.3 × 94.3 cm, at the Getty. The flowers you see are blue because a red pigment faded; Van Gogh painted them violet. Decide which version you want before ordering. Expect $299.95 to $599.95 unframed.

The painting in numbers

The facts a reproduction has to work around.
The originalWhat it means for a copy
YearMay 1889, in his first weeks at the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-ProvencePublic domain; Van Gogh died in 1890.
Where it isJ. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, inv. 90.PA.20, acquired 1990The Getty publishes its own conservation research on the painting, which is unusually useful here.
MediumOil on canvasMedium matches — the difficulty is the thickness, not the material.
Original size74.3 × 94.3 cm (29.3 × 37.1 in)Under a metre wide. A 40 × 30 in canvas slightly exceeds it.
Aspect ratio1.27 : 1 (landscape)Between the 1.25:1 and 1.33:1 stock shapes; either crops only a few centimetres.
Common reproduction sizes20 × 16, 24 × 20, 30 × 24, 40 × 30 in40 × 30 in (102 × 76 cm) is the nearest size above the original.

Dimensions, date, accession number and acquisition year from the J. Paul Getty Museum collection record, read 2026-09-05.

Why it is hard to reproduce

There are two hard things here and one of them is invisible. Start with the visible one: the paint is thick. Van Gogh loaded the brush and left every stroke standing, so the leaves are ridges of paint two or three millimetres proud of the canvas, each one laid in a single pass with a loaded flat brush and never touched again. A copyist who works the way most copyists work — thin underpainting, then modelling, then highlights — cannot get there. Impasto has to be right first time, because a second stroke into wet paint muddies both.

Detail of the iris blooms and leaves, showing thick single brushstrokes standing proud of the canvas and dark outlines around the petals.
Detail. Every leaf is one loaded stroke with a dark contour beside it, not blended modelling. In the painting those strokes stand two to three millimetres proud of the canvas; a frontal photograph like this one cannot show that. Wikimedia Commons, public domain

The invisible problem is colour. Getty conservators analysing the paint layers found a faded violet beneath the blue surface: Van Gogh mixed geranium lake, a fugitive red, with blue, and the red has largely gone. Associate paintings conservator Devi Ormond described going deeper into the paint and finding the violet still there. The analysis also identified cobalt blue and ultramarine, and areas that now read as muddy brown were originally brilliant orange. In other words, the picture on your screen is not the picture Van Gogh finished — the flowers were purple against a stronger orange ground, and the complementary contrast that drove the composition has decayed.

Which one should a studio paint? Almost all of them copy the faded surface, because that is what the reference photograph shows, and for most buyers that is the right answer: it is the painting people recognise. But it is a choice, and a studio that has never thought about it will not tell you it made one.

What cheap copies get wrong

  • Flat paint. Printed-looking irises with no relief. Run your hand across a good copy and the leaves should be tangible.
  • Too many strokes. Each leaf is one gesture. Copies built from short repeated dabs turn the bed into moss.
  • Lost outlines. Van Gogh drew a dark blue-black contour beside most leaves. Blending it away removes the drawing that holds the mass together.
  • A grey ground. The earth is warm red-orange. Cheap versions grey it down, and the blue immediately goes dull because the complementary is gone.
  • The wrong Irises. Van Gogh painted several iris pictures, including a still life of irises in a vase now in the Metropolitan Museum. Confirm the Getty version — a garden bed, seen from above, with one white bloom.

Sizes and where it hangs well

Scale diagram comparing the 94.3 by 74.3 cm original with a 40 by 30 inch reproduction above a 2.2 metre sofa on a 2.6 metre wall.
A 40 × 30 in canvas is 102 × 76 cm — eight percent wider than the Getty original and the nearest stock size above life size. Oil Painting Reproductions

This is an all-over composition with no focal point and no horizon, which makes it forgiving: it works above a sofa, above a bed, in a stairwell, on a landing. Because the interest is in the surface rather than the subject, size matters less here than on most paintings — a 24 × 20 in canvas still reads correctly, which is not true of a portrait or an architectural picture.

What it does need is light from the side. Impasto is lit, not seen; a picture lamp or a window to one side turns the ridges into a second image at dusk. Hung flat under a downlight, the most expensive thing about the copy disappears. Keep it off strongly coloured walls — the orange ground fights terracotta and pink, and reads best against white, bone or a cool grey.

Price range

Art & See list prices for a hand-painted, unframed canvas, against the 94.3 × 74.3 cm original.
Size (in)Size (cm)Price (USD, unframed)Relative to the original
20 × 1651 × 41$299.9554% of the original width
24 × 2061 × 51$359.9565%
30 × 2476 × 61$430.9581%
40 × 30102 × 76$529.95108% — the nearest size above life size
48 × 36122 × 91$599.95129%

Art & See prices verified 2026-09-05 from the store's published price ladder. Frames are extra and, per the store's refund policy, final sale.

The eight studios were priced on 2026-09-05 against a single reference painting, Van Gogh's The Starry Night, at the nearest size each sells to 30 × 24 in: $239 at overstockArt, $299 at Reproduction Gallery, $354 at BrushWiz, $376 at HandmadePiece and $481.95 at 1st Art Gallery. TOPofART listed $1,116.87 for its single size, but on that date its add-to-cart opened a notice saying the studio was temporarily suspending new orders for oil painting reproductions, so it is not a live option. Art & See lists Irises as a stock product from $299.95 unframed; its shipping policy gives processing as 2–3 weeks typically, up to 4 weeks for complex work and up to 8 weeks for large or intricate pieces, and it sends a photograph of the finished canvas for approval before dispatch. On this painting the premium buys thickness: ask any studio how much paint goes on, because a thin Irises is a failed Irises at any price.

Where to buy

Three routes, and on this painting the decision is really about impasto.

Carries Irises as a standing product from $299.95 unframed, hand-painted in oil, with a preview photograph before dispatch — which on an impasto painting is the check that matters, since you can see the relief in raking light before it ships; it is roughly double the cheapest studio checked.

Art & See
  • overstockArt — Cheapest of the eight studios priced on 2026-09-05, at every size ($239 at 24 × 36 in), against a stated 6–8 week pre-order wait — the honest choice if budget is the binding constraint.
  • Reproduction Gallery — Publishes 48 sizes for a single painting, from 23.2 × 29.5 in to 94.5 × 120.1 in — a range that brackets the Getty original's 29.3 × 37.1 in, so a canvas at close to actual size can be picked from the list instead of quoted. (TOPofART also sells at original dimensions, but on 2026-09-05 its checkout carried a notice suspending new oil-reproduction orders.)

Frequently asked questions

How big is Van Gogh's Irises?

74.3 × 94.3 cm, or 29.3 × 37.1 inches, according to the Getty's collection record. A 40 × 30 in reproduction is 102 × 76 cm, about eight percent larger than the original.

Were the irises always blue?

No. Getty conservators found a faded violet under the blue surface: Van Gogh mixed a fugitive red, geranium lake, with blue, and the red has largely gone. Areas that now read as muddy brown were once brilliant orange.

Should a reproduction restore the original violet?

Almost no studio does, and for most buyers that is right — the faded version is the one people recognise. If you want the 1889 colour you must ask for it explicitly and supply a reference; expect the studio to treat it as a custom commission.

How thick should the paint be?

Visibly thick. On the leaves the original strokes stand two to three millimetres off the canvas. Ask for a preview photograph shot in raking side light, which is the only way to judge relief from a picture.

Sources

  1. Irises, 1889, accession 90.PA.20: dimensions, date, provenance — J. Paul Getty Museum. Accessed September 5, 2026.
  2. Irises (painting): pigment analysis, faded geranium lake, Saint-Rémy context — Wikipedia. Accessed September 5, 2026.
  3. Getty Open Content Program terms — J. Paul Getty Trust. Accessed September 5, 2026.
  4. File:Vincent van Gogh - Irises (1889).jpg — Wikimedia Commons. Accessed September 5, 2026.
  5. Irises (Q2282256): collection, inventory number, dating — Wikidata. Accessed September 5, 2026.
  6. Refund policy (frames final sale; preview and refinement before dispatch) — Art & See. Accessed September 5, 2026.
  7. Shipping policy (production time, preview photograph before dispatch) — Art & See. Accessed September 5, 2026.

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