Do you buy art reproductions?

Yes - there are some very good reproductions of classic and modern paintings. I have no issue with it. Most of us can’t afford our favorite paintings - but I much prefer original oils to posters or prints. I think it’s great - and a way to employ artists. Just like live bands who do cover songs - absolutely nothing wrong with it and arguably better than many other options,

R1 Thank you! I am new to art collecting and decorating my own place. Do antique shops have paintings like this? Would you trust buying online?

A lot of people on DL (and in real life) frown on museum prints. Fine, let them. I've got museum prints hanging up as well as original art (none of it rare or expensive) and photographs I took myself, some professionally framed, some not. If you aspire to be taken seriously as a collector, hide the museum prints, but otherwise go for it.

You should buy what you like. That being said, there are plenty of living artists doing very good work. Visit galleries and see if there's an artist or artist's works that speak to you. I spent a few years doing that and the search was part of the enjoyment. I think it's always preferable to have original artwork. I had repros and switched to originals. The two artists I liked had small works for $800-$1200 and I'm working my way up to larger ones that are around $6000. I'm not looking at them as an investment, but as works I love.

Check out Society6. They are a great site for a variety of reproduction artworks - oil, prints and even metal based copies. Especially for modern art, they have some interesting stuff for a good price. Just make sure to checkout the size - the cheaper ones are too small.

[quote] oil paintings of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison

Wtf why?

One accessible way to buy painted copies (not mechanical reproductions) of classic paintings that have some value (without being too expensive) is to buy 19th Century copies paintings classic paintings from museum collections. These were copied by students as part of their art school exercises and training in technique; they were also sold to tourists and to furnish expensive houses, but not expensive enough to afford masterworks in museum collections. The quality of these varies from crude and amateurish to exceptional, and they turn up all the time at auctions in Old Masters and general sales. (Stick with auction houses that have excellent reputations for quality art and antiques, and that have specialists in those fields on staff; avoid auction houses that specialize in limited editions and multiples unless you know a great deal about those tricker types of works.)

Auctions are the best place to buy paintings. You will be competing mostly against dealers who will want to mark up their purchases by 100% or more; buying from specialist dealers you pay a higher price but reap the benefit of their expertise, reputation, and guarantees as to authenticity and value. Take a little time to learn about dealer/auction terminology (it's simple, straightforward, and easy to learn; and once you've learned you'll know immediately what is meant by the terms and when a dealer/auction is being vague and when they are saying a thing is the real deal: style of, in the manner of, school of, circle of, attributed to, bearing signature "Renoir", signed "Renoir", catalogue raisonné, etc. All have specific meanings and the values reflect those nuances.

Say you like El Greco but don't have tens of millions to buy a good one. You can buy a copy of one of his portraits painted with considerable skill in the 19th or 20thC for $50 or $250 depending on the size and quality. It's not extraordinary quality: anyone who knows art would recognize the style but realize that it's a much later copy, but it's a more interesting thing to have than a really good photomechanical reproduction that for all its detail is flat and has the charm of a magazine reproduction.

Where in the 19th and 20th Centuries museums were filled with artists copying works from a few feet away, China is now filled with factories of artists painting to order reproductions of whatever famous (or semi-famous) painting you might like; on the one hand the skill is technically good, but the feel of the thing is off and the colors and there's a remove from the original because it was not painted on an easel right in front of the original in the Rijksmuseum or wherever the original hangs.

Put on your walls what you like.

I have an old college friend who was a huge snob about what you put on your walls--he would say snobbish things if you had framed posters on his walls once he could afford real art. I visited him not so long ago on the East Coast, and he and his partner have really ugly original pieces that do not go well together at all.

I have some pieces by original artists, and some small framed reproductions. I am the one who looks most at my artwork, and I think they blend well together.

Absolutely not.

Great info R7. Is liveauctioneers the place to go? I’ve never heard about these paintings. There are so many different places that auction - but I’ve never seen something like you mentioned on any of them.

R10: Liveauctioneers is one place that aggregates the online listing details of some 6,000 auction houses around the world; it's good if you are based in the U.S. as American auction houses are especially well represented. Inavaluable.com is another similar big one popular in the U.S.. In Europe there are others with more of an emphasis on that part of the world. Both are credible middle men that connect you (through their bidding software) to auctions in big cities and out of the way places. An auction house may normally charge a 25% buyer's commission and may charge 28% via Invaluable or Liveauctioneers as this is how they make money -- providing the search engine and handling the credit card payments. The real advantage is being able to search across a huge number of auctions with ease. The actual business of asking questions about the art or arranging shipping is handled through the auction house. It's still up to you to ask questions and verify information before an auction, and that's done with the auction house: the search engines are just middle men (though it's a great thing to, in a few =keystrokes, be able to see what 16thC Century Italian paintings estimated to sell at under $2500 are coming up at auction around the world, for example.)

If it's an expensive work, you can usually shave off a few percentage points of the buyer's commission by bidding directly through the auction house rather than through the intermediary that led you to the work.

One caution: paintings can look very different in real life than they do in photos. Don't hesitate to ask if the website photo is an accurate representation of color, to ask for photographs of the complete work front and back, to ask for a condition report that should note any defects, restorations, alterations, etc., or to ask the basis of an attribution to a particular artist. The auction houses have people on staff to answer those questions. If you're inexperienced, always ask for a condition report, and ask as far in advance as you can before the staff get swamped with requests in the last 24 hours. Some houses have a minimum value requirement for formal condition reports, but they will answer questions short of a report. And the condition reports are carefully worded to limit responsibility, "to the best knowledge of the auction staff," etc.

The big auction search engines also allow you to register searches, and they will alert you when something matching, say, "Caspar David Friedrich" or "romanticism + landscape" comes up for sale.

Get a reproduction or a museum print and out in on your wall. Why not have something beautiful?

No. I'm not opposed to them, but I personally do not buy reproductions.

I only purchase original art. That is not to say my collection is high end, it isn't, but everything I own in terms of art, as in sculpture, paintings, etc are original works.

That said, there are a number of artworks from illustrators, photographers, etc. that are pretty much only sold in reproduction, that I would love to own, but I cannot afford.