Nobody is selling you the original Starry Night. It hangs behind glass in New York, it is effectively priceless, and no offer moves it. What has been for sale for as long as studios have existed is a copy: a painting made by hand, stroke for stroke, in oil on canvas, at a size that fits your wall. Before people order one they usually have two questions, and both deserve straight answers. Is it legal? And what exactly am I getting for the money?
A copy, not a print
A print — even a canvas print with brush-texture gel rolled over it — is a machine-made photograph of a painting, printed in ink. A hand-painted copy is a new painting: pigment ground in oil, mixed and applied by a person, built in layers over days. You can see the difference from the side of the canvas. A print has uniform texture from highlight to shadow; a copy has ridges where the brush turned, thinner paint in the darks, thicker paint in the lights. The oil painting vs canvas print guide walks through five tests that separate them. Prints have their place — they are cheap, flat and fast. They are not a painting, and in a room with real daylight the difference is not subtle.
The law, in one paragraph
Copyright in a painting lasts for the artist’s life plus seventy years. In 2026 that means: if the painter died in 1955 or earlier, the painting belongs to the public and anyone may copy it. Van Gogh (died 1890), Vermeer (1675), Botticelli (1510), Hokusai (1849), Monet (1926), Klimt (1918), Sargent (1925) and Munch (1944) are all free to reproduce, copy and sell. Picasso (1973), Dalí (1989), Rothko (1970), Hopper (1967) and Warhol (1987) are not — their estates still control reproduction, and a studio that takes your money to copy them is doing something you do not want to be part of. The second rule is simpler and older than copyright: a copy must never be sold as an original. That is fraud in every jurisdiction, and no honest studio does it. Every reproduction we sell carries the same plain label on its page — “Hand-painted reproduction of classic artwork. Not an original antique.” — and the certificate in the tube says the same thing.
What a good copy changes on purpose
Size. The originals come in awkward dimensions. The Night Watch is 363 by 437 centimetres; the Birth of Venus is nearly 2.8 metres wide; the Girl with a Pearl Earring is smaller than an A3 sheet. You order standard canvas sizes, and a good copyist redraws the composition to the new proportions rather than stretching or cropping the original out of shape.
Colour. Historical pigments are gone or unusable: lead white is restricted, Indian yellow vanished around 1908 with the practice that produced it, genuine smalt is unstable. Modern equivalents are close but not identical. Expect a small, intelligent drift — slightly cleaner blues, a whiter white — not a colour-match guarantee.
The hand. A copy is not signed as the original artist, and the copyist’s own hand shows in the rhythm of the brushwork. Two honest copies of the same painting, by two different painters, will not be identical. That is not a defect; it is what “hand-painted” means.
What a good copy must keep
- Approval before shipping. Photographs of the finished canvas are sent to you, and you approve or request changes before it is packed. A studio that ships without showing the work is gambling with your money.
- Depth in the darks. Cheap copies go flat and grey in the shadows. The original’s depth usually comes from glazed layers, and the copy should be built the same way, not mixed darker on the palette.
- The drawing underneath. Proportions in faces, hands and architecture are drawn before they are painted. Wobble in the drawing cannot be hidden by paint on top.
- A certificate naming materials. Oil on cotton canvas, painted by hand, and the month it was completed — in writing, in the tube.
The museum-quality checklist goes deeper into how to judge a reproduction before you pay for it.
Sizes and prices, without the games
Copy pricing is simpler than portrait pricing: there are no subjects to count and no reference photograph to assess. Most horizontal compositions use the landscape canvas table below.
| Canvas size | Price |
|---|---|
| 12 × 16 in | $340 |
| 16 × 20 in | $452 |
| 20 × 24 in | $568 |
| 24 × 30 in | $714 |
| 30 × 40 in | $949 |
| 36 × 48 in | $1,163 |
| 48 × 64 in | $1,605 |
Taller formats such as the Mona Lisa start at $364 (12 by 18 inches), and near-square canvases such as the Water Lilies or The Kiss start at $289 (12 by 12 inches). The exact figures sit on each product page; the numbers above are the same table those pages calculate from, so what you read here is what you pay at checkout.
How long it takes
A copy is a faster commission than a portrait because the reference never changes: no photograph scouting, no mockup rounds. Painting takes 10–14 days. Transit to the US, UK or EU adds 2–3 weeks, shipped rolled in a rigid tube — what unrolling, stretching and customs look like is covered in the shipping guide. Call it four to five weeks door to door. For Christmas, order by early November; that leaves margin for the last week of courier delays, which happen every year without exception.
How to order one
The twelve most requested paintings — Starry Night, the Sunflowers, the Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Scream, the Night Watch and others — are in the famous painting gallery, each with its own product page, size table and from-price. If the painting you want is not there, ask: if it is public domain, it can usually be quoted the same way, and the answer takes about a day. After it arrives, budget for stretching and framing at a local framer — roughly $40–70 for a 16 by 20 in the US — which the framing and hanging guide covers in full. Nothing about hanging a copy is different from hanging any other canvas on a stretcher.
The short version
- A hand-painted copy is legal when the artist died more than seventy years ago — in 2026, that means 1955 or earlier.
- A copy is never sold as the original. If a seller hints otherwise, walk away.
- Size, pigment and brushwork change on purpose. Values, drawing and edges must not change at all.
- Prices run from $289 to $1,605 by size and format, with no per-subject surcharge.
- 10–14 days painting, 2–3 weeks transit: four to five weeks door to wall.
- Photo approval before shipping and a certificate naming the materials are minimum requirements, not extras.
A copy of a great painting is not a shortcut to owning it — it is a different thing entirely: a painting on your wall that happens to have a famous ancestor. Done well, it outlives the trend that made you want it. Done badly, it is wallpaper. The difference is the same as in any commission — who is holding the brush, and whether anyone showed you the work before it shipped.