Hand-Painted Oil Painting Reproductions vs Giclée vs Canvas Prints: What You Are Paying For

A canvas print of a famous painting costs about £30. A giclée of the same image costs £60 to £250. A hand-painted oil reproduction — a real painting, of the same picture — starts at £129 and runs to £459 at 36 × 48″. The difference is not resolution or paper stock. It is whether someone stood in front of a canvas for two or three days.

This guide is about reproductions of paintings that already exist: the Monets, Rembrandts and Vermeers in the masterworks wing. If what you want is your own photograph painted, that is a different comparison with different numbers, covered in oil painting vs print vs canvas.

The five formats, cheapest first

Canvas print, about £15 to £60. An inkjet prints the image onto coated canvas, stretched over bars. The canvas is real; the painting on it is not. No brushwork and no raised paint, because there is no paint. Dye inks in a sunlit room lose their reds first, and you notice within a few years. It fills a wall cheaply, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Giclée, about £60 to £250. An archival print, usually pigment ink on cotton-rag canvas or heavy paper. Better colour, better substrate, pigment inks rated by their makers in decades rather than years out of direct sun. The giclée vs canvas print decision is the easy one here: if you are buying a print at all, buy the good print.

Oil-effect or hand-finished giclée, about £100 to £300. A giclée someone has gone over with clear gel medium, or a few strokes of real paint, for surface texture. The image underneath is still printed. This is the format most often mis-sold, because "hand-finished" and "hand-painted" are one word apart and mean entirely different things.

Hand-painted oil reproduction, £129 to £459. A copyist paints the picture in oil, by hand, from a high-resolution museum file — eight to twenty-five hours of work depending on size and how busy the composition is. The brushwork, the layering and the raised paint are real. Hand-painted oil painting reproductions are the only format here that behaves like a painting under a lamp.

The original, priced in millions. Auction house or museum wall. Included for the top of the ladder.

How a hand-painted oil painting reproduction is actually made

The painter works from the museum's own high-resolution photograph, not a postcard. Most oil painting reproductions sold in the UK are painted overseas; ours are painted in Xiamen, which is the honest reason a real oil painting can cost £199 rather than £1,900.

The canvas is primed and the composition blocked in thin in one sitting. Then it waits. Oil does not dry so much as oxidise, and a layer needs days before the next can go on top without lifting it. That drying time, not the painting time, is why the whole thing takes about three to four weeks plus delivery. A painter could finish a 16 × 20″ Vermeer in three days of work, but not in three days of calendar.

When it is done you get a photograph of the finished painting before anything ships, and if the colour is off we keep working until it is right. There is no digital preview, no mock-up and no sketch to sign off, and we do not send work-in-progress shots: a half-dry underlayer looks alarming and tells you nothing.

Then it is taken off its bars, dries fully and ships rolled in a tube, unframed. Paintings have travelled that way for two centuries; your local framer stretches or mounts it. Nothing is charged when you submit the form on a painting's page — we reply within one working day and send a payment link once you are happy with the plan.

How to spot an oil-effect print sold as hand-painted

The listing will not tell you; the arithmetic will. A painter working eight to twenty-five hours cannot be paid from a £79 sale price that also covers canvas, paint, freight and margin. If a "hand-painted oil" is priced like a print, it is a print.

Then the edges. A printed canvas wraps the image round the sides or shows a clean margin with a printed edge. A hand-painted canvas has a tacking margin where the paint stops raggedly and the primer shows through, because the painter worked to the picture, not the trim line.

Then whether the texture agrees with the image. On a real painting the raised paint follows the brush: thick in a highlight, thin in a shadow. On an oil-effect giclée the gel is spread across the whole surface in a generic swirl, so a flat patch of sky carries the same texture as an eye. Gloss gives it away too: a varnished painting is uneven, some passages sunk and some bright, while a sprayed topcoat is uniform.

And "museum quality reproduction" is a marketing phrase with no standard behind it. It appears on £25 posters. Read the material description instead.

Which paintings reproduce well by hand, and which do not

The hand-painted reproduction vs print question has a different answer for different pictures, and this is the part most shops will not tell you.

Reproduce beautifully by hand: Vermeer, Rembrandt, Ingres, the Dutch Golden Age generally, English portraiture, most academic realism. These are built from thin controlled layers, where the effect lives in the drawing and the light. A good copyist gets genuinely close, and the object does what the original does — it changes as you walk past it.

Reproduce well with a caveat: Van Gogh, late Monet, Sargent, anything with heavy impasto or fast visible brushwork. A copyist builds the paint up and it feels like a painting, but they are interpreting another painter's hand rather than tracing an image. Expect that spirit rather than a stroke-by-stroke match; if you want an exact match to the file, a giclée is closer.

Do not reproduce by hand: Pollock, Rothko, most large-scale abstraction, and anything whose meaning is the physical event that made it. A Pollock is a record of a specific set of movements; copying it produces a decorative painting with drips on it. A Rothko is dozens of thin washes whose whole effect is scale and edge, and at 24 × 36″ on a domestic wall that effect is not there. Buy the good print and spend the difference on framing. That answer costs us the sale and is still the right one.

Size, framing and where a reproduction hangs

Seven sizes, all unframed and rolled: 8 × 10″ at £129, 12 × 16″ at £169, 16 × 20″ at £199, 20 × 24″ at £249, 24 × 36″ at £299, 30 × 40″ at £379, 36 × 48″ at £459. Full detail sits on pricing; the oil painting size guide covers picking a size for a wall.

Two things catch people out. Framing is a separate cost paid locally, and on the smaller sizes a decent frame can approach the price of the painting — get a quote before you order, not after. And a reproduction rarely matches the original's proportions: museum paintings are odd shapes, ours are standard sizes that fit standard frames, so the painter fits the composition to the canvas, usually with a small crop at the top or sides. If a particular edge matters, say so in the notes.

Raised paint needs light coming across it, not straight at it. A downlight directly overhead loses most of what you paid for; side light from a window, or a picture light angled from above and to one side, is where a hand-painted reproduction earns its money.

Side by side

Format	24 × 36″	Surface	Reads as a print from	Realistic life
Canvas print	~£30	Ink on coated canvas	1.5 m	5–10 years before visible fading
Giclée	£120–£250	Pigment ink on cotton rag	1 m	Decades out of direct sun
Oil-effect giclée	£150–£300	Print plus clear gel	50 cm	Decades, but the gel yellows
Hand-painted oil reproduction	£299	Oil paint	Never	Centuries with basic care
Original	Millions	Oil paint	Never	Already lasted centuries

One correction to a claim you will see elsewhere, including in an earlier version of this page: a hand-painted reproduction holds no meaningful resale value. There is no secondary market for a good copy of a Monet. It outlasts a print by a wide margin, which matters if you intend to keep it, but buy it to live with, not as an asset.

When a print is the right answer

Plainly: often.

Buy a print if you are renting, or it is going in a child's room, a corridor, a rented office or a holiday let. Buy a print if you want a very large image on a very large wall for very little money, if the painting is a Pollock or a Rothko a copyist cannot honestly serve, or if you want a pixel-faithful match to the museum file. And buy a print if you are not yet sure you like the picture enough to keep it — £30 is a cheap way to find out.

Buy the painting when you want the object as much as the image: when it hangs where you look at it every day, when you want it to outlive you, or when you want something on the wall that a person actually made.

Frequently asked questions

Is it legal to sell hand-painted oil painting reproductions?

Yes, for works out of copyright. Everything in the masterworks wing is public domain: the painter is long dead and the picture belongs to everyone. It is sold and described as a reproduction, never as an original and never with a certificate implying otherwise. Copying a living artist's work for sale is a different matter and we do not do it.

Is the painting signed?

The copyist reproduces the picture as it is, so a signature inside the image gets painted with everything else, as part of the composition. Nothing is added to suggest the original artist made this object. If you would rather it was left off, say so in the notes field and it will be, at no cost.

Can you change the size, the crop or the colours?

Size, yes — pick from the seven. Crop, usually: tell us which edge matters and the painter fits the composition around it. Colours, within reason, since people often want a warmer or cooler cast for a room. Ask for something structural, a different background or a figure removed, and it becomes a commission at a different price. Either way it goes in the notes field, and the reply within one working day will say whether it works.

Can you paint my family in the same style?

Yes, and that is a commission rather than a reproduction: £220 to £549 by size, from £59 per additional person or pet, and WELCOME20 takes 20% off a first commission. Send the photograph through commission from a photo and describe the treatment you want — Dutch Golden Age light, Sargent's loose brushwork, a renaissance costume — in the notes. There is no style picker and no style surcharge. Choosing a style for a family portrait covers what each master's manner does to a photograph; what a custom oil painting costs covers the money.

How long does it take, and what arrives?

About three to four weeks of painting and drying, plus delivery. Before it ships you get a photograph of the finished painting, and if it is not right we keep working. What arrives is the painting, rolled in a tube and unframed, ready for your framer. Anything you want to check first, ask — nothing is charged until you have agreed a plan.