Hand-Painted Oil or Canvas Print: What You Are Buying
Both exist, both have their place, and the difference is not a matter of taste. This page sets out what each one actually is, so you can decide which you want rather than discovering it after delivery.
A canvas print
An image printed onto canvas with ink, then stretched. From across a room a good print looks convincing. Up close it is flat: the surface has the texture of the canvas weave and nothing else, because there is no paint sitting on it. Tilt it towards a window and no light catches, because there is nothing raised to catch it.
Prints are cheap and fast, and for a corridor, a rental or a child’s room they can be exactly the right answer. We say so plainly rather than pretending otherwise.
A hand-painted oil reproduction
A painter works the picture in oil on primed canvas, building it in layers over days or weeks. The paint stands off the surface. Where Renoir loaded his brush, our painter loads theirs, so the ridges fall in the same places and the light moves across the canvas as you walk past it.
Colour behaves differently too. Oil pigment has depth that ink cannot reach: the greens and violets Renoir buried under his skin tones read as skin from across a room and as pure colour up close. A print flattens that into a single averaged surface.
Where the difference shows most
On Renoir, more than on most painters. His whole method is broken colour and soft edges; hundreds of separate touches that the eye assembles into a cheek or a sunlit dress. A print reproduces the photograph of that; a painting reproduces the act. On a landscape the gap is narrower. On a face it is obvious.
Longevity
An oil painting on artist-grade canvas, kept out of direct sun, lasts generations; that is why the originals are still hanging. Ink on canvas fades, and the substrate is not made to be restored. A print is a decoration with a lifespan. A painting is an object you can hand on.
Price, honestly
A print costs a fraction of a painting, and the reason is labour: one is a machine pass, the other is weeks of a trained person’s time. If the budget points to a print, buy the print and enjoy it. If you want the surface, the light and the longevity, that is what we make.
What we sell
Every piece in this catalogue is hand-painted in oil. There is no print option hidden in the size list, and nothing here is a print sold as a painting. If you would like to see the difference before committing, ask us for a close-up photograph of the surface of a finished canvas; the raised paint is visible immediately.