I think there are lots of artists on Etsy who might do that kind of thing -- look for artists who paint in a similar style to the painting and advertise that they do commissions. Then you could send them a picture of the painting and the dimensions and materials you want. Or you could advertise for the same on Craigslist with the amount you'd be willing to pay - if you could find someone talented in your area you could work with them pretty closely to get what you wanted.

Though none of this solves the question: Who gets the original?

Try: http://www.etsy.com/alchemy/

"Turn your ideas into reality with Alchemy!
Buyers can post requests for custom handmade items, and then sellers bid on the opportunity to make the goods."

I would be surprised if you could affordably hire an artist to reproduce the painting. What about reproducing it electronically? You could even have it printed on canvas and stretched? That seems more feasible.

While it won't be hard to find someone to recreate it one of any appreciable quality will cost a fair deal of money depending on complexity. Artists have to eat too and only the simplest of works are going to come cheap. I spend more than thirty dollars just for supplies on most fairly sized oil paintings.

You could look into a photographer to get a nice print made of it. The print could even then be put on canvas, to keep some of the original texture / appeal.

Scan it on a computer and reproduce it on canvas.

No way, that painting is worth way more than $10-- not only is it cool, but it's on velvet, making it awesome. Any artist who can actually recreate this will, and should, charge upwards of $400 because it's very time-consuming. I think you're better off finding a pro/amateur photographer who can photograph this thing well, and get a photographic print of it.

If you can't find someone to paint a duplicate for the right price, you could take it to a giclee printer and have them reproduce it for probably under $100. The copy would be a print, not a painting.

i think it would be best to find a photographer who is capable of capturing a quality photo of the art piece. you can then have prints made from the photograph. there are a lot of quality options for prints out there, including prints on canvas and paper.

trying to find someone capable of reproducing that with any skill is going to cost you a fortune.

Go to this reverse image site and there are quite a few hits for this picture. Most of them seem to be book covers and see if you can order a print or at the least get a good electronic version.

http://www.tineye.com/

You should go to a printing shop specializing in giclee printing, which artists use to do nice quality repros of their paintings to make into posters, sell as prints, etc. You can probably have it done for less than $100.

The process uses more colors than the typical CMYK used in inkjet printing. Plus you can choose what type of medium to print it on - paper or canvas; who knows - maybe they could even do velvet if you wanted it. :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gicl%C3%A9e

I second the alchemy route!

oh dear, a photo copy costs about 10 bucks, and yet, you want to pay a professional artist 10 bucks to replicate a realistic oil painting??? talking about cheap artist...

I remember reading about Thomas Kinkaide (gack!) making giclee prints which were then "tarted up" with some sort of texturizing substance that his customers paid through the nose for... 10xthrough the nose if the tarting up were done by The Man Himself. If you want something more labor-intensive than just a print, maybe that would satisfy everyone in this sticky situation?

There are artists out there who do this, but there might be copyright issues if you can't prove that the painting is in the "public domain."

Here is one company that does reproductions:

http://www.oceansbridge.com

Click on the "request a painting" for info about requesting a specific reproduction.

As an artist (I've done a few reproductions for family...), there is no way that you're getting away with paying what you think it's worth ($10-$30...). Oil paint is especially a lot of work, especially depending on the size. Based on your description, I'd probably start my bidding in the high hundreds, if not low thousands.

Even getting prints made on canvas isn't usually that cheap, depending on how large you want them reproduced.

I'd just shop around on Google by searching various wordings of what you're asking; there are bound to be a lot of companies that can handle this type of thing. You may have to have it photographed professionally and printed from that, rather than scanned.

Whoa, TinEye is so cool!

Some artists might feel a little weird about recreating another artists work (there are also copyright laws as someone pointed out)--but photo on canvas sounds like a good idea if you don't have the funds to spring for a giclee reproduction. Send it to be professionally done--dont try to scan it onto your home computer.

I'll take a guess and say the original very fine 19th century painting from which your velvet reproduction was copied is hanging in a museum somewhere, and other better reproductions of it are available. Hope somebody here comes up with the name of the artist.

I'M AN ARTIST!

Hi! I'm an reader here, and I'm also an artist... perhaps you could commission me to re-create your painting?

I'm a Canadian artist. I live in Ottawa Ontario. I took Art and Art history at the university of Toronto and have plenty of experience studying artworks. I have replicated many artworks for study as well as for sale. Right now I'm working on my second commission for a local church. I recreated Caravaggio's "Annunciation" as my first painting. Here is a link to that painting: A picture of my version is the following photo in the album.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?
pid=8283618&l=3729a24982&id=780430693

Here's an example of my work, please look in my photo album. (A copy of one of monet's poppy fields)

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1167570&l=69e4a13c2f&id=780430693

The starving artists comment is true...

"Will paint for food"

There are whole towns in southern China devoted to churning out reproduction oil paintings. There are millions of them on ebay. They'll work from a photo, no problems. I've been to China and seen them and the quality isn't bad if repro is your thing.

I'm not going to go off on how some artists may find it offensive when reading this post due to the dollar amount that's being thrown out there for a replica... I understand that it actually could be very hard to just scan and copy this image because of the velvet! I still have a hard time scanning my paintings and having them turn out pretty decent.

I have replicated a painting that I can find prints of online, not at too many places sadly, but there is no way I could sell it for such a small amount. People really need to take in the idea of how much supplies cost, not to mention labor. Good luck on your quest.

I don't think that April is claiming that she's only planning to spend $30 on a reproduction, merely that she believes the original painting is worth $30.

The most sensible option, to me, would be to take the original to a printing studio, scan it, then print it on canvas. As harbourbridge mentioned there is a huge Chinese industry painting reproductions of oil paintings, but the costs are quite significant - a few hundred dollars, I believe. And no guarantee that they will quite capture the indefinable quality of the picture that April's husband and SiL love.

Even better, though, would be for one of the parties to magnanimously allow the other to have the picture, rather than go through all of this convoluted manouvering. It's just a picture - the goodwill garnered from letting it go will be worth more than the painting itself.

Hi guys, I'm April.

FOR THE RECORD: That photo is not the painting I'm talking about! I don't have a photo of the one at my in-laws. That one up there is just an example found somewhere online. The only thing they have in common is that the background is black and the main subjects are both ships.

@Blandwagon
You're right: I think the original is worth $30 or less. I know getting it reproduced would cost more, but I'd like to keep that cost as low as possible. Also, it's a very simple painting, nothing as nice as the photo above, which is why I thought it could be recreated fairly easily.

@LBhirise
You said: "That's a first, family members fighting over who gets the velvet painting. LOL." Frankly, I agree it's rather silly. But they both have fond memories of looking at the painting hanging over their parents' bed while their mother read them stories as kids. I can see why they both like the image for that reason.

To those who said to scan it: Can you read? ;) I said I thought of it but can't, because the paint is thick and has varying degrees of relief. At best it'd cast weird shadows and at worst it wouldn't lay flat. Plus it's too big for any scanner I've seen.

Taking a picture of it and printing the photo on canvas, however, is an excellent idea I hadn't thought of.

Can there be a rule for future "Good Questions" that images need to match the request?

Mrs.Mack... you can indeed get something with texture scanned.

And the winkie-emoticon just BARELY gets you past the "Can you read?" comment.

Maybe get it professionally photographed, then printed onto canvas?

And you are incorrect...there are many types of professional scanners that go much larger than any legal size scanner you get at Staples. They are utilized by all kinds of print shops, photographers, etc.

It might also be worth noting, the materials alone to actually duplicate this painting with oils would cost well over $30; a repro from even a student would run at least a few hundred dollars.

It seems your best bet is to contact a photography studio about getting it scanned or photographed.

@patrick

The photo often doesn't match the post on AT. They wanted a picture, I didn't have one, so I sent them that and said it wasn't the actual painting. Not my fault that wasn't included in the post.

Mrs. Mack--

My plea on that topic was to the AT editors, not you. It's happened before, and then people get all hung up on the photo.

LOL, "all hung up on the photo," that would be me. I wasted an hour last night looking online for the painting. Thanks to drasylve for the link to tineye.com. That was wonderful and will be great for future picture searches, but they didn't turn up anything for this one that identified it. So April, if you still have the link to "found somewhere online," do post it please.

Your painting is _Ship In A Storm_, by James E. Buttersworth. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_E._Buttersworth

-- Hand-painted reproduction, between $180-$900:
http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/James-E.-Buttersworth/Ship-In-A-Storm.html

-- Paper prints, between $30-300:
http://www.artrenewal.org/commerce/customorder.php?artworkid=8989

If you could get a good, high-quality photograph of it, a website like

f you could get a good, high-quality photograph of it, a website like CanvasPop could reproduce it on canvas. It's not "cheap" but it's affordable for a treasured childhood memory and squashing a sibling war. Or, you could pay your own child (cookies? candy? a pony?) to do a reproduction, which could be even more sentimental.

"hung up on the photo"

I don't know if you meant to make that a pun or not, but that's funny. :)

@twoshakes, looks like m_j_s did the work for you! I just did a Google Images search for "ship night painting" and picked one I thought looked nice.

Mrs. Mack - the scanning idea WILL work - at a good printshop/photo studio they have large drum scanners, huge flat bed scanners, and photographic processes that would capture the texture and color beautifully. These people are experts in this kind of thing and will work with you to get the end result you're looking for. Good Luck.

PS. Do you or your SIL have children? It might be fun to have children recreate the painting. New memories, a fun project for the kids, and I'm imagining an awesome end result.

Nope, no kids.

I think I'll go for the taking a picture route and printing it to canvas. If that doesn't work, I'll look around for the kind of professionals you mentioned.