How to commission a portrait of a parent or grandparent

Most of the portraits of living parents we paint are ordered in a hurry, and almost always for the same reason: a birthday that ends in a zero, a retirement, a move into a smaller flat, or a diagnosis. Nobody plans this commission three years ahead. But it is the one commission where waiting has a real cost: the sitter is the only person who can tell you the painting got the jaw wrong, and the reference material is still being created.

What makes this different from a memorial portrait

Two things, and both are advantages. First, you can still take photographs, which means the hardest problem in portraiture — source material — is solvable in a single afternoon. Second, the sitter has opinions. That is not an obstacle; it is the best quality-control mechanism available to you.

What does not change is the price. A single-subject portrait of an 84-year-old costs exactly what a single-subject portrait of a 34-year-old costs. Canvas size and subject count are the only two variables in our pricing, and both are published on the custom portraits page before you contact anyone.

Four questions to ask before you send us anything

• Which version of themselves do they want on the wall? This is the question that surprises people. Roughly a third of the sitters in their eighties ask to be painted from a photograph taken in their fifties — the way their grandchildren never knew them. That is a legitimate answer and an easy brief, provided the photograph survives.
• Where will the painting live? A 16 × 20 in canvas that looks generous in a dining room can be the largest object in a one-bedroom flat. Ask, then measure. If it is going on their wall, the size needs to be their choice and your money.
• Alone, or with someone? A single face gets the most paint per inch and costs least. A couple married forty or fifty years usually belongs on one canvas together.
• Do they want to see it before it is finished? Before any paint is applied we send a digital mock-up showing the exact crop, composition and background. Put that mock-up in front of the sitter; it is the cheapest correction you will ever make.

Twenty minutes, one window, forty frames

If the sitter can still sit comfortably, take the reference photographs yourself. Any phone from the last eight years is more than enough. The whole session takes twenty minutes and needs no equipment.

• Window light, no ceiling light. Mid-morning, beside a window that does not catch direct sun. Turn off every interior lamp and never use flash — direct flash flattens the planes of an older face and removes the bone structure a painter needs.
• Sit them down. A seated sitter lasts twenty minutes; a standing one lasts five. Use a chair with a back, keep the camera at their eye level, and stand four to six feet away rather than leaning in.
• Ask for a three-quarter turn, with one shoulder closer to the window. Full frontal is unflattering at every age; three-quarter puts light on one cheek and gives the painter a shadow side to work with.
• Frame head and shoulders, filling about half the frame, so the face is at least 1,000 pixels across. Our reference photo guide explains the 500-pixel floor below which we will decline a source rather than take your money.
• Take forty frames in bursts of five and keep talking. Directing produces a grimace. The frame that ends up on the canvas is almost always around the thirtieth, once they have stopped posing.
• Decide about hands deliberately. Either bring both hands fully into the frame — resting on a knee, holding a cup — or crop well above the wrist. A frame slicing through a hand reads as an accident for the next fifty years.

Send the original files. A photograph forwarded through a messaging app has already been re-compressed, and it can lose half its detail before we ever see it.

When the best photograph is thirty years old

Some parents will not be photographed. Others are simply not well enough on the day, or the commission is being planned from a hospital corridor. This is common and usually workable.

• Film prints still carry a portrait. Have the original print scanned at 600 dpi on a flatbed at any print shop; a wallet-size photograph needs 1,200–2,400 dpi because it is so small. Do not photograph a print with your phone.
• Fading is correctable; damage often is. A 1978 print that has drifted toward orange or magenta is normal ageing, and matching its colour then compositing two photographs into one composition adds $60–$70 to any commission.
• Do not blend decades on one face. A composite of a 1974 print and a 2019 phone photograph works as a composition, but skin cannot be averaged between them. Choose one era per person.

Our guide to painting from an old, damaged photograph sets out which repairs are honest and which are not.

One face, or two

The arithmetic is simple. One subject on a 16 × 20 in canvas is $389 and produces a portrait that reads from across a room. Two subjects on 12 × 16 in is $379 and is the honest minimum for a couple — we do not paint two faces on 8 × 10 in, because at that scale each head falls under two inches and stops reading as a person. Two subjects on 16 × 20 in is $499, and 20 × 24 in at $699 is what a couple married fifty years typically deserves.

The difficult case is one living parent and one who has died. We composite a recent sitting with an older print onto a single canvas, with the same $60–$70 colour charge, and we will tell you before you pay if the two sources cannot sit convincingly side by side.

Size: let the wall decide

Two numbers do most of the work. Hang the centre of the canvas 57 to 60 inches from the floor, and let its width run to two-thirds to three-quarters of the furniture below it. Everything else follows from the room the painting will actually live in.

• A retirement flat or a small sitting room: 16 × 20 in at $389 for one subject is the default, rising to 20 × 24 in at $549 if it hangs above a sideboard.
• Your own house, above an 84-inch sofa: 24 × 36 in at $789 for one subject. A materially narrower canvas will read as a postage stamp above that much furniture.

Measure the wall, photograph it, and write the width in your email. The full arithmetic is in our wall-art sizing guide.

Style, and the honest conversation about age

Our four house styles cost exactly the same — the style never moves the price. What it changes is how kindly the painting treats a face that has been lived in.

• Classical realism is the most literal. It hides nothing and flatters nobody, which is precisely why some sitters ask for it.
• Warm realism is where most of our legacy portraits land. Softer edges, warm mid-tones, a gentler fall of light: the sitter is unmistakably themselves, and the painting is kind about it.
• Impressionist and painterly breaks the face into visible brushwork. It works beautifully at large sizes and can be the most flattering of the four, because the eye completes the features.
• Contemporary and graphic uses hard edges and strong shadow. It is striking, and it is the least forgiving on older skin. If a sitter has asked to look “a bit better”, this is the wrong answer.

Our position is straightforward: we do not paint a smoothed, idealised version of a person. We paint them as they are, with the light placed kindly. If you want the face of a particular year, use a photograph from that year. There is a full comparison in the portrait style guide.

What belongs on the canvas, and what belongs on the frame

Keep names and dates off the painting. A painted inscription fixes the canvas to one decade, and small painted lettering is easily misread. Put the name, the birth year and any dates on an engraved brass plate on the frame — any framer will cut one for $20–$40 — and keep a handwritten note from the sitter tucked behind the canvas. The canvas carries a signature and nothing else.

What it costs

Two variables: canvas size and subject count. Style, background, the number of reference photographs you send and the age of the sitter change nothing.

Shipping is free and tracked worldwide. The canvas arrives rolled in a tube, and a local framer stretches it onto bars for roughly $35–$75 at 16 × 20 in or $70–$140 at 24 × 36 in. Colour matching or compositing old prints adds $60–$70. Rush painting is $90 and brings the studio time to three weeks; it does not shorten transit. Larger commissions can be split 50% to begin and 50% before dispatch.

Timing, and the honest argument against waiting

Painting takes three to five weeks and transit three to five business days, so six weeks before a date is comfortable and five is workable. Book before the birthday rather than in the week of it: a portrait commissioned during the party is a portrait delivered in the wrong month.

The more important deadline is not on a calendar. Order while the sitter is well enough to look at a mock-up and say “that is not my chin”, and while they can still be photographed with the light behind them. If the painting has to be a genuine surprise, we produce the mock-up for one family member to approve without revealing the finished canvas — but it is worth asking whether anybody would really prefer the surprise to the approval.

The short version

• Photograph the sitter if you possibly can: window light, seated, three-quarter turn, forty frames, no flash.
• Faces need 500 pixels minimum and 1,000 comfortably. Send originals, never messaging-app copies.
• One face starts at $189; two subjects start at $379 on 12 × 16 in, because smaller does not work.
• Ask which decade of themselves they want on the wall before you choose the photograph.
• Put names and dates on an engraved frame plate, not on the canvas.

Send your photographs and the wall measurement to the quote page and you will get a recommended size, a fixed price and an honest verdict on the sources, usually within 24 hours.