Custom Renoir Style Portrait, Hand-Painted from Your Photo

One sitter, painted by hand in oil from a photograph you send. Choose a close likeness of the photo, or skin and light treated the way Renoir treated his sitters.

The photograph to send

• Window light, no flash. Soft side light keeps the shape of a cheek.
• A face that fills about a third of the frame.
• The original file from the phone, not a copy from a messaging app.
• No beauty filter, which smooths the details that make a face particular.
• A moment when the person is slightly off guard: half turned, listening, reading.

A glance a little to one side often looks more like someone than a passport stare. If the best photograph is old or small, send it with any others you have.

Two renderings of one face

The faithful rendering keeps skin tones, expression and lighting as the camera recorded them. Memorial pieces and formal gifts usually go this way. The Renoir rendering uses saturated colour in freely brushed touches, with shadows tinted by what surrounds the sitter instead of turned grey, and suits a birthday or a bold interior. In both cases the eyes and the corners of the mouth come first, and the setting stays quieter than the face.

The canvas is a new oil painting in his manner and it is not an original Renoir.

A child alone on the canvas

Around 1880 the banker Louis Cahen d’Anvers commissioned two portraits of his three daughters. One is Mlle Irene Cahen d’Anvers, showing Irène at about eight and also known as the girl with the blue ribbon. The actress Jeanne Samary, who also sits among the diners in Luncheon of the Boating Party, has her own entry in the catalogue as the Portrait of the actress Jeanne Samary.

Numbers that matter

• Sizes follow the shape of your photograph, small to large. Hang it with the eyes near your own eye level.
• A portrait of one person, smallest canvas, rolled, starts at $218 (30 × 40 cm, rolled canvas).
• Painting takes 2 to 4 weeks.
• Shipping is free worldwide and tracked. Carriers: UPS or DHL.
• After dispatch, allow 5 to 7 business days.

Photographs of the finished canvas come to you first, and corrections can be asked for before it is dispatched.

When the portrait is a memory

For someone who has died, send every photograph, blurred ones too, and mark the one closest to how you remember them. One image can supply the face, another the eye colour or the set of the hair. For a black and white print a sentence about colours helps more than a second copy.

Sitter questions

Can the shirt become a jacket?

Yes. Clothes and room can change. A picture of the clothes you want makes it exact.

Can the person look younger?

Only from a photograph taken at that age.

What if it does not feel like them?

Ask for corrections before dispatch. After delivery, a painting can be returned. Return period: 30 days.

You can cancel your order at any time until it ships.

For two people, a family or a pet, find them on the custom Renoir painting page.

Tell us about your portrait