Price, lead time, and the question of whose photograph it is

Room Text, at the Entrance

The Price List, Taped to the Counter

Under a lamination gone amber at one corner where somebody's coffee has visited more than once, is the price list. Someone has annotated it in pencil — a small or less beside one figure the studio evidently reconsiders more often than it reprints the card.

The front desk is the last room, the one you reach whether or not you intended to buy anything. A queue of three, moving at the speed queues move.

Ahead of me a woman is asking, quietly enough that I get about half of it, whether a photograph her cousin took at the wedding is hers to use. Behind me somebody reads the card aloud to a companion who isn't listening, in the register people use for menus they've already decided against.

Twelve by sixteen inches (30.5 × 40.6 cm), one hundred and eighty-eight dollars. Forty-eight by seventy-two (121.9 × 182.9 cm), eight hundred and twenty-two.

Between them a ladder that gets less steep the higher you climb — which nobody at the counter appears to notice, and which is, quietly, the most honest thing printed on it. The large canvas is eighteen times the area of the small one and four times the price.

There's a fixed cost buried in every line: the stretching, the setting up, the first hour of a painter's attention regardless of what it's being paid to attend to. And it divides across more surface the larger you go.

Then the Arithmetic Nobody Prints

A moderate oil portrait is twenty to forty hours of work at 24 × 30 inches (61 × 76.2 cm). A large, detailed one: fifty to seventy.

Working from photographs collapses what used to be six to ten sittings into one or two — Sargent, for the sake of the comparison, sometimes ran past eighty.

Take the low end of the modern figure against a $320 canvas at 24 × 36 in (61 × 91.4 cm), and you get somewhere between eight and sixteen dollars an hour — out of which also come the canvas, the stretcher bars, the paint, the studio's margin and the crate.

Nobody at this counter is being overcharged.

Whether anybody at the other end is being adequately paid is a separate question, and the answer is a concentrated production base in Shenzhen rather than anything a price card is going to explain. I'm not going to pretend I've resolved that. I'm going to make sure you can see the number.

The Line in the Smallest Type

I linger on one line longer than the rest, printed smaller, in the type reserved for what somebody hopes you'll skip:

Photographs of your finished canvas sent within twenty open business days of the order.

Twenty working days. Four calendar weeks once the weekends have been taken back out — and longer if the thing turns out to be complicated enough to deserve it, which the card admits, in a subordinate clause, in the smallest type on it.

It's a date, not a mood. An enforceable promise in a trade that generally prefers soft ones, and the only line on the card I would hold anyone to.

It is also the moment to raise a problem — not the moment the crate arrives, by which point the conversation is a different and much worse conversation.

Am I Even Allowed to Use a Photograph I Didn't Take?

The woman ahead of me is still on the wedding photograph. The person behind the counter gives an answer I recognise, because I looked the same thing up once, for a painting I never commissioned.

Not automatically.

The shutter creates the copyright and gives it to whoever pressed it, and a painting made from that photograph is a derivative work — the framing, the posing, the light are the authorship, not merely the face.

If that sounds like a technicality that has never troubled anyone, consider that the Supreme Court of the United States spent a term on precisely this and decided it 7–2 in May 2023.

Lynn Goldsmith photographed Prince in 1981 and licensed one frame to Vanity Fair in 1984, for four hundred dollars, explicitly and in writing as an artist reference. Vanity Fair handed it to Warhol. Thirty-two years later the Warhol Foundation licensed the resulting silkscreen to Condé Nast for ten thousand dollars.

The Court held that a new meaning or message is not by itself enough to make a secondary work transformative when the purpose is substantially the same and commercial.

Four hundred dollars for the reference. The exact transaction happening at this counter, several times a day, mostly without the paperwork.

For domestic purposes the practical position is duller and easier: use your own snapshots, or ask. Most photographers, asked politely for a private, non-commercial commission, say yes.

And note that a print release — which is what wedding contracts usually grant — is not the same instrument as permission to make a derivative work. It lets you print. It does not, by itself, let you have it painted.

A Print I Bought Once

I think of a print I bought in a museum shop, of a painting I'd just spent twenty unhurried minutes standing in front of.

Flat, correctly coloured, entirely faithful, and somehow not the thing at all — missing the single quality that had kept me there, which was a surface you could have located with your eyes shut.

I never hung it. It's in a drawer somewhere, doing nothing.

How Long, and What If My Photo Isn't Good Enough?

Four to five weeks in the ordinary run, less for a fee — and the twenty-working-day photograph is when you find out.

A thin reference doesn't halt the process. It changes what the process can honestly promise, and the studios worth using say so at that mark rather than at delivery.

And here's the inversion worth carrying away: a weak photograph is an argument for the painting and against the print.

A print reproduces every flaw at full size. A painter at least interprets them.

If your only reference is a thousand-pixel scan, the correct purchase is a small painting, not a large print.

What It Costs: The Full Ladder

Faces: first three free, +$75 (4–6), +$150 (7–9), +$300 (10+).
Options: elite artist +$100, customisation +$50, urgent production +$30, varnish +$15, nameplate $10–30.

Three worked totals

• A single portrait at 16 × 20 in (40.6 × 50.8 cm) — $214.
• A family of five at 24 × 36 in (61 × 91.4 cm) with an elite artist — $495.
• A wedding group of eight at 30 × 40 in (76.2 × 101.6 cm), background simplified, needed in eighteen days — $616.

Compare configured totals, never "starting at" figures. PaintYourLife's tested 20 × 24 in (50.8 × 61 cm) oil came to $389 + $79 frame = $468 against $245 for the same size here — but their bracket absorbs multi-subject complexity that is itemised here at $25 a face. The gap narrows as the group grows.

Head to Head: The Whole Market, Configured

Two columns are worth reading across before the price column.

Shipping. Where freight sits inside the number, the quoted price is the price. Where it's added, you cannot compare anything until checkout — which is precisely why "from $89" and "$188" are not comparable sentences.

Lead time. Notice how many rows say "not published." A studio that commits to a date in public — 4–5 weeks, 4–6 weeks, canvas photographs within 20 open business days — is a studio confident about its own queue. That confidence is worth more to a person buying a birthday present than fifty dollars of price difference.

Wall Label

Same size, printed instead — 12 × 16 in (30.5 × 40.6 cm) $49 · 16 × 20 in (40.6 × 50.8 cm) $55 · 24 × 36 in (61 × 91.4 cm) $79 · 36 × 48 in (91.4 × 121.9 cm) $118. Roughly a quarter of the hand-painted price; reproduces the photograph exactly, flaws included.

Labour behind the price — 20–40 hours for a 24 × 30 in (61 × 76.2 cm) oil portrait; 50–70 hours for a large detailed one. From life, six to ten sittings; from photographs, one or two. Sargent occasionally exceeded eighty.

Rights — copyright belongs to the photographer from the moment of exposure. A painting from a photograph is a derivative work. Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith, 598 U.S. 508 (2023), 7–2. A print release is not permission to make a derivative work.

What it is not — not an investment; a commissioned portrait has no secondary market and is worth what it costs to have another one painted. Not colour-accurate to your screen. And not proof against a weak reference: an elite artist paints a 150-pixel face more beautifully, and it is still not your grandmother's face.

Three Questions Asked at the Desk

What does a custom oil painting from a photo actually cost?

$188 at 12 × 16 in (30.5 × 40.6 cm) to $822 at 48 × 72 in (121.9 × 182.9 cm), before frame and options, with the first three faces included. Compare configured totals across vendors, never "starting at" figures, and check whether shipping is inside or outside the number.

How long does it take?

Four to five weeks standard; under three weeks for +$30. Photographs of your canvas are due within 20 open business days of order confirmation — about four calendar weeks — extended where the painting is genuinely complex.

Working backwards for a gift: a standard order needs five weeks plus shipping. For a December date, order in the first week of November.

Can I use a photograph somebody else took?

Not without permission. Copyright vests in the photographer at the moment of exposure, and a painting made from their photograph is a derivative work — the posing, framing and lighting are the protected expression, not just the face in it.

In practice: use your own photographs, or ask in writing. Most photographers grant permission readily for a private commission. School, studio and professional pet photographs are the same situation.

Leaving

The queue moves me forward before I've finished the thought. The person at the till asks, not unkindly, whether I'm buying anything.

I say no.

Back out through the door I came in by, past the room with the corkboard, past the room with the sticking door, into weather that has decided — in the hour I was inside — to actually rain rather than merely threaten it.

Some things you leave a building having only priced.

Further Reading

• F.A.Q. Custom Paintings from Photos
• How to Commission a Custom Oil Painting: From Concept to Canvas
• Giclée Prints Explained — the quarter-price alternative, argued fairly.
• The Enduring Legacy of Hand-Painted Oil Paintings

Sources

Market pricing and turnaround

• Hand Painted Portrait Prices — PaintYourLife
• Paint Your Life review — Reviewed
• Paint Your Life — CNN Underscored
• Custom Oil Painting from Photo — Instapainting
• Instapainting Custom Oil Painting Review 2026 — Dogster
• How Much Does a Custom Portrait Painting Cost in 2026? — PortraitVilla
• Custom Portrait Painting Cost: 2026 Pricing Guide — Acousart
• Oil Painting From Photo — Etsy marketplace

Labour, sittings and studio practice

• Commissioning a Portrait: step-by-step guide — The Royal Society of Portrait Painters
• Commissioning a Painting: Cost Guide and Price Range 2026 — Design Transition Studio
• Commission an Oil Portrait — Kevin McEvoy
• Chinese village produces 60% of world's replica oil paintings — Nikkei Asia

Copyright

• Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith, 598 U.S. 508 (2023) — Justia
• Opinion of the Court (PDF) — Supreme Court of the United States
• Case summary — U.S. Copyright Office Fair Use Index (PDF)
• The Warhol decision revisits the boundaries of fair use — WIPO Magazine
• Copyright Law: Understanding Your Rights as a Photographer — PPA
• Wedding Photography Copyright vs. Print Release — Cameron Martinez
• Copyright vs. Print Release — Alicia Lacey Photography

Materials and vendors

• The Six-Month Rule: When Is It Safe to Varnish Oil Paintings? — MontCarta
• How Long Does Oil Paint Take to Dry? — Fine Art Tutorials
• Prices, options and lead times quoted live from the published TopImpressionists.com, ArtsDot.com and OriginalUniqueArt.com order pages, August 2026, with worldwide shipping included. The 20-open-business-day canvas-photograph deadline is published studio policy as of 8 August 2026.
• Fabulous Masterpieces, Reproduction Gallery, TOPofART and MFA Images archival replicas — prices, lead times and shipping as published, August 2026.