How Our Renoir Reproductions Are Made

Every canvas on this site is painted by hand, in oil, by a person. Nothing is printed, and nothing is machine made. This page explains what that actually involves, because “hand-painted” is a phrase a lot of shops use loosely.

Who paints it

Each commission goes to a studio painter who works in one register and stays there. The painter who spends their week on Renoir’s figures is not the one doing seascapes: skin is the hardest thing in this catalogue to get right, and it is not a skill you pick up between landscapes. A senior painter reviews the canvas before it is signed off.

What it is painted on

Artist-grade cotton or linen canvas, primed with several coats of gesso and sanded between them, so the surface takes the brush the way the original did. Pigments are artist quality rather than student grade; the difference shows up years later, when cheap reds fade and cheap whites yellow.

Canvases are painted with a margin all round. That margin is what lets you stretch, re-stretch or frame the picture later without losing any of the image.

How long it takes

A single figure at a modest size takes a painter about two weeks of working time. Painting time for the hand-painted oil: 2 to 4 weeks.

Oil needs to dry before it can travel. That drying time is part of the schedule, not padding: a canvas shipped too early arrives with the surface still soft.

What Renoir specifically demands

Two things, and both are about the figure. The first is flesh: Renoir built skin from greens, violets and creams as much as from pink, and a painter who reaches for a single skin tone produces something that looks like a doll. The second is edges. His figures dissolve into the light around them rather than being cut out of it; a hard outline anywhere in the picture kills the whole effect.

This is why we do not treat a Renoir as interchangeable with any other Impressionist. The brushwork is the subject.

Before it ships

Every canvas is photographed in daylight and checked against the original: proportions, palette, the placement of the features. If the likeness or the tone is off, it goes back to the easel. You see that photograph before the piece is packed, and if you are not happy, we keep working.

Then it is wrapped in glassine, rolled or stretched as you chose, boxed, and shipped insured. Delivery is free worldwide.