Everybody thinks a commissioned oil portrait is priced by feel. By vibes. By how nice your coat looked in the reference photo. Rubbish. I went looking for the actual pricing logic behind a hand-painted portrait, and it isn't a feeling — it's a formula, published, sitting right there on the order page, doing arithmetic on your canvas in square centimetres while you're still deciding what shirt to send a photo of.
Nobody puts that formula on a gallery wall label. So let's put it here instead.
The Lie, and the 30-Second Truth
The lie: portrait commissions are priceless and unknowable, a favour some temperamental painter does you if your face is interesting enough. The truth, no hedging:
A hand-painted oil portrait from your photo costs $166-$822 at an atelier that prices by canvas area, and $300-$3,500 from an independent artist who prices by the hour. Canvas size is the dominant variable, not talent. The number of faces is the second, and it's a flat surcharge, not a multiplier.
I checked this myself, live, on a real painting, on Mus3ums.com's own order engine — Leonardo's Mona Lisa — and a 16 x 20 in (40.6 x 50.8 cm) hand-painted oil quoted at exactly $214. Not "from $214." Not "starting at." $214, on the page, no phone call: 24 x 36 in (61 x 91.4 cm) is $320, 36 x 48 in (91.4 x 121.9 cm) is $489. I pulled that last one live too, on Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party, and it landed at exactly $489. A fourth face onward adds $75 flat, at any size. Comparable work on Etsy the same week ran $95-$319. An independent artist working the going rate of $2.50 per square inch charges about $800 for that identical 16 x 20 in (40.6 x 50.8 cm) canvas.
Per square inch: the atelier runs about $0.67, the independent artist about $2.50. A ratio of roughly 3.7 to 1. Remember that number — it solves half the confusion in this trade and I'm giving it to you before the second heading.
Three Things Get Called "Commissioning a Painting," and Only One Is What You Think
Here's the received wisdom: "commissioning art" is one thing, one price, one experience. Demolished in five rows.
| Atelier commission | Independent artist | Marketplace commission | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who paints it | A trained copyist, assigned by skill tier | One named artist, their own hand, their own studio | One named artist, found through a platform |
| Priced by | Canvas area plus options, published up front | Hourly rate x hours, or per square inch | Artist sets it; platform takes 30-50% |
| Typical range | $166-$822 | $300-$3,500 (to $10,000+ hyper-real) | $1,500-$9,000 |
| Lead time | 4-5 weeks (under 3 for +$30) | 8 weeks to 6 months | 4 weeks to 6 months |
| Resale value | None | Some, if the artist has a market | Some |
Both ends are honest. An atelier sells you skilled labour at a known rate. An independent artist sells you authorship — a name on the back of the canvas. Want your grandmother's face to look like your grandmother's face? Buy the labour. Want a painting recognisably by somebody? No atelier on earth can sell you that at any price. Stop asking them to.
The Price Matrix: Read It Once, Never Get Fooled Again
Hand-painted oil on stretched cotton canvas. Live pricing logic, August 2026, ex-frame, ex-options — worldwide shipping is already in the number.
| Canvas size | Metric | Area | 1-3 faces (included) | 4-6 faces (+$75) | 7-9 faces (+$150) | 10+ faces (+$300) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 x 10 in | 20 x 25 cm | 516 cm² | $166 | $241 | $316 | $466 |
| 12 x 16 in | 30 x 41 cm | 1,239 cm² | $188 | $263 | $338 | $488 |
| 16 x 20 in | 41 x 51 cm | 2,065 cm² | $214 | $289 | $364 | $514 |
| 18 x 24 in | 46 x 61 cm | 2,787 cm² | $236 | $311 | $386 | $536 |
| 20 x 24 in | 51 x 61 cm | 3,097 cm² | $245 | $320 | $395 | $545 |
| 24 x 30 in | 61 x 76 cm | 4,645 cm² | $292 | $367 | $442 | $592 |
| 24 x 36 in | 61 x 91 cm | 5,574 cm² | $320 | $395 | $470 | $620 |
| 30 x 40 in | 76 x 102 cm | 7,742 cm² | $386 | $461 | $536 | $686 |
| 36 x 48 in | 91 x 122 cm | 11,148 cm² | $489 | $564 | $639 | $789 |
| 48 x 72 in | 122 x 183 cm | 22,297 cm² | $822 | $897 | $972 | $1,122 |
Going bigger is a bargain. There's a fixed setup cost baked into every order — assessing your photo, building a mock-up, assigning a painter — and after that, price grows slower than canvas does. Walk from 8 x 10 in (20.3 x 25.4 cm) to 24 x 36 in (61 x 91.4 cm): area multiplies by 10.8x, price by only 1.9x.
Extra faces are a flat tax, not a percentage. A fourth face costs $75 whether the canvas is a postcard or a barn door. That's +45% on the small size and a laughable +9% on the large one. Got a five-person family? Go bigger — the surcharge just stopped scaling while the canvas kept growing.
Where the "1-3 faces free" line sits
| Faces in the photo | Surcharge | Typical subject |
|---|---|---|
| None, or up to 3 | Included | Solo portrait, couple, parent + two children, pet, house, landscape |
| 4 to 6 | +$75 | Nuclear family, small wedding party group |
| 7 to 9 | +$150 | Extended family, team photo |
| 10 and more | +$300 | Large group, class or company photo |
Options: The Vendor Honesty Test That Takes Four Seconds
| Option | Price | What it actually is |
|---|---|---|
| Elite / senior artist | +$100 | Higher skill tier; more detail, longer to finish |
| Final varnish | +$15 | Applied only once the paint has properly cured |
| Custom modifications | +$50 | New background, remove a person, merge two photos, change clothing |
| Urgent production | +$30 | Queue position — not a faster brush |
| Frame — gallery wrap | $89-$231 | Stretched, ready to hang |
| Frame — outer moulding | $151-$522 | Traditional profile around the canvas |
| Frame — ornate / gilt | $250-$745 | Baroque and museum profiles |
| No frame | $0 | Ships rolled in a tube |
Any vendor whose "museum quality" comes with zero priced options is selling you an adjective. An atelier that can tell you varnish costs $15 has actually built the thing it's selling. Adjectives are free to print — which is exactly why some websites are made of nothing else.
The framing reality check. Only about a third of hand-painted oil buyers ever take a frame, because a moulding frame at 24 x 36 in (61 x 91.4 cm), freight included, can run $306-$401 against $320 for the actual painting. The wood can cost more than the picture. Most people take the rolled canvas and find a framer on their own street.
Lead Time: The Number Most People Get Wrong
The price gap between an atelier and an independent artist looks unexplainable until you put the calendars side by side.
| Stage | Atelier | Independent oil painter | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quote & assessment | 1-2 days | 3-14 days | Independents are one person answering their own email |
| Queue before work starts | 0-3 days | 2 weeks-6 months | The single biggest variable. Painters with a following quote 6 months+ |
| Mock-up / sketch approval | 2-4 days | 1-2 weeks | Atelier sends a composited mock-up before any paint touches canvas |
| Painting | 2-3 weeks | 8-12 weeks for a small oil | Layered oil needs each layer touch-dry before the next |
| Curing before varnish | Ships unvarnished or lightly retouch-varnished | 6-12 weeks | Oil cures by oxidative polymerisation, not evaporation |
| Shipping | 5-10 days worldwide | 3-14 days | |
| Total, photo to wall | ≈4-5 weeks (under 3 for +$30) | ≈4-9 months |
Ask a studio "what's my start date," not "how long does the painting take" — the painting is rarely the bottleneck, the queue is. And if anyone promises a fully varnished oil in under six weeks, either it isn't oil, it's thinly painted, or the varnish went on too early. Oil is touch-dry in 24-72 hours and fully cured in 6 months to 2 years. Varnishing later is a twenty-minute job any framer can do — that's not a corner cut, it's the material behaving correctly.
Worked Example: What a Mona Lisa Actually Costs, at Two Sizes
The most-requested reproduction in the world is also the cleanest way to show the pricing mechanism, because everyone already knows the original. I confirmed the live number myself: a 16 x 20 in (40.6 x 50.8 cm) hand-painted oil of the Mona Lisa checked at $214 on Mus3ums.com's order engine. Scale up to the Louvre's own dimensions and the two sizes below tell you everything about how this pricing actually works.
Size A — the Louvre-scale copy: 77.4 x 51.3 cm (30.5 x 20.2 in)
| Line | Price |
|---|---|
| Hand-painted oil on canvas | $272 (≈€235) |
| Same size as a giclée print, for comparison | $68 |
| + Gallery wrap | +$137 |
| + Outer moulding frame | +$237 to $311 |
| Typical framed total, mid-range frame | $524 |
Size B — the statement wall: 100.2 x 66.4 cm (39.4 x 26.1 in)
| Line | Price |
|---|---|
| Hand-painted oil on canvas | $353 (≈€306) |
| Same size as a giclée print, for comparison | $87 |
| + Gallery wrap | +$201 |
| Typical framed total, mid-range frame | $758 |
The canvas grew 68% between the two and the painting price grew only 30% — the sub-linear area exponent doing its work. But the frame price grew 47%, because framing scales with perimeter and shipping weight, both of which grow faster than the labour does. At large sizes, the frame is the expensive half of the order. That's exactly why two-thirds of buyers skip it.
The Louvre footnote worth knowing. The Louvre runs a copyists' programme — roughly 150 copyists admitted at a time, a roughly one-year waiting list — but the rule is that a copy made in the museum must differ from the original by at least one fifth in size, and must carry the copyist's own signature, never the master's. So the one thing the Louvre's own copyists structurally cannot make you is a same-scale Mona Lisa. A commercial atelier can, and does; that rung is the single most-ordered Mona Lisa size in the trade.
Head to Head: Who Charges What, and Who's Bluffing
Observed August 2026. This is where the mystique goes to die.
| Vendor | What it makes | 16 x 20 in (40.6 x 50.8 cm) (or nearest) | Extra subject | Returns | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mus3ums.com | Hand-painted oil, giclée, custom portraits from photo | $214 | +$75 per band of 3 | 30-day money-back | Shipping included; digital mock-up before painting starts |
| WahooArt.com | Masterpiece-first catalogue | $214 | +$75 per band | 30-day money-back | Formula-based pricing by canvas area |
| AllPaintingsStore.com | Trade/volume framing | $207-$214 | +$75 per band | 30-day money-back | Slightly lower published base on some sizes |
| MFA Images (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) | Archival print replicas of the museum's own collection | No hand-painted photo-commission product at all | Not applicable | Museum shop policy | Named here because it's the honest answer to "can a museum paint my photo?" — it can't and doesn't try |
| Reproduction Gallery | Hand-painted oil on canvas only | $299-$329 at ~75 x 75 cm | Artist/order-dependent | 45-day refund or replacement | 40,000+ paintings, 700+ artists catalogue |
| Fabulous Masterpieces (UK) | Hand-painted oil, portraits from photo of people, pets, houses | From £197 + VAT | Quote-based | Not stated on landing page | 4-6 weeks, with an approval photo first |
Three things worth saying out loud. One: MFA Images is on this table because it's the honest answer, not the competitive one — a museum shop sells archival replicas of works it owns, not a painting of your grandmother, and no amount of "museum quality" branding elsewhere changes that. Two: Reproduction Gallery's 45-day returns window is the longest here, and a returns window is the single most honest number any art business publishes — nobody offers 45 days on something they expect back. Three: notice how many of the published, no-phone-call-required tables give you an exact number instead of "request a quote." That's not an accident. It's the only way to make a price table you're not embarrassed to show a stranger.
"Will It Actually Look Like My Photo?"
It'll look like a painting of your photo — and the gap between those two things is the entire product.
A painting that copies your photo pixel-for-pixel looks like a cheap print wearing a costume. What you're buying is a painter making a few thousand small decisions — softening a shoulder so a face reads first, warming a shadow under a jaw, quietly killing the ugly thing in the background you didn't notice. If literal accuracy is truly the goal, a giclée print of the same photo beats any human hand and costs a fraction of the price — the Mona Lisa print quote I pulled at 50 x 70 cm came back at just €56.
What genuinely decides the outcome is your source photo:
- Send the highest-resolution original — not a copy that's been through three messaging apps.
- Soft, directional light. A painter wants half your face in shadow, because shadow is what gives a painter something to paint.
- No flash, no motion blur, no phone "portrait mode" background mush. All three transfer straight to canvas and none can be un-painted.
- Send several photos, not one. A second angle rescues a closed eye or a bad jaw.
- A +$50 modification fee covers merging photos, removing someone, or changing a background — routine, priced, not a favour.
A studio that tells you your photo is unusable before taking your money is the best vendor in the room. Anyone who promises a masterpiece from any file you throw at them isn't confident. They're just hungry.
What the Money Absolutely Does Not Buy
- Not an investment. A rendering of your own photograph has essentially no resale market. Its value is replacement cost, full stop.
- Not repeatability. A machine repeats. A person doesn't. Insist on seeing a photograph of your actual canvas before it ships.
- Not rescue for a bad photo. Low resolution, hard flash, motion blur — oil paint is not a repair shop.
- Not an exemption from copyright. Public-domain paintings are fair game. Living artists' work is not, whoever holds the brush.
- Not speed. Four to five weeks at an atelier, months with an independent artist. Anyone promising a fortnight is lying to you.
Which Option, by Situation
| Situation | Take this | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Gift portrait of one person, under $250 | Atelier, 12 x 16 in (30.5 x 40.6 cm) or 16 x 20 in (40.6 x 50.8 cm), no frame | $188-$214; frame it locally for less than the freight would cost |
| Family of five, living-room centrepiece | Atelier, 24 x 36 in (61 x 91.4 cm), 4-6 face band | $395; going bigger costs +37% for +170% of canvas |
| Wedding party, twelve people | Atelier, 30 x 40 in (76.2 x 101.6 cm), 10+ band | $686; the flat surcharge is a much smaller bite here |
| You want a painting by a specific artist | Independent artist, direct | No atelier sells authorship at any price. Budget $500-$3,500 |
| Cheapest possible hand-painted portrait | Etsy | $50-$319 — but read reviews on that seller, not the shop |
| You need it inside two weeks | Giclée print instead | No honest oil commission clears two weeks. None. Ever. |
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost to commission an oil painting from a photo?
$166-$822 at an atelier priced by canvas area; $300-$3,500 from an independent artist; $1,500-$9,000 through a curated marketplace. The most common size — a single-figure 16 x 20 in (40.6 x 50.8 cm) oil — is $214 at an atelier, $95-$319 on Etsy, and about $800 from an independent artist at $2.50 per square inch.
How long does a commissioned oil painting take?
Four to five weeks from an atelier, under three weeks for +$30 urgent production, including a digital mock-up you approve before any paint is applied. Four to nine months from an independent artist. Rush options at either buy queue position, not faster painting.
Why is one oil portrait $214 and another $8,000?
Labour market, not quality tier. Per square inch it's about $0.67 at an atelier against $2.50 for the independent-artist convention — roughly 3.7 to 1. Marketplaces add another 30-50% on top of whatever the artist charges.
How much extra for more than one person?
At an atelier, banded and flat: up to 3 faces included, 4-6 +$75, 7-9 +$150, 10+ +$300, regardless of canvas size.
Should I buy the frame from the studio?
Usually not. A moulding frame at 24 x 36 in (61 x 91.4 cm), freight included, can cost more than the painting. Only about a third of buyers take one.
What photo should I send?
The highest-resolution original file. Soft directional daylight, part of the face in shadow, no flash, no motion blur, no phone background blur. Send several angles.
How much is a hand-painted Mona Lisa reproduction?
$272 at 77 x 51 cm — within a centimetre of the Louvre panel — and $353 at 100 x 66 cm, shipping included. A 16 x 20 in (40.6 x 50.8 cm) oil of the same painting checked live at $214. Note the Louvre's own copyists cannot make you the same-scale version: museum rules require a copy to differ from the original by at least one fifth in size.
Is a commissioned portrait an investment?
No. A rendering of your own photograph has essentially no resale market. Original work by a named artist with an auction record is an entirely different product.
The Verdict
Buy the biggest canvas your wall can take, from the atelier that shows you the table before you ask for it, and spend the money you saved on the frame on a framer who can actually see your wall.
I checked the Mona Lisa myself. $214. Not "from." Not "starting at." That's not romance. It's better than romance. It's honesty, and it's rarer than either of us would like.
Sources
Prices and market
- Hand Painted Portrait Prices — PaintYourLife
- Oil painting from photo price list — Paint My Photo Now
- Custom Oil Painting From Photo — Etsy
- Custom Painting For Sale — SINGULART
- How are public prices calculated? — Artmajeur
Artist pricing conventions
- How to Price Art Commissions — Milan Art Institute
- Pricing a 24x30 oil painting portrait commission — WetCanvas
- Commission pricing at $2.50 per square inch — Peacock Oils
Lead times, curing and varnishing
- How Long Does a Custom Oil Painting Take? — Katie Peña
- How Long Should an Oil Painting Dry Before Shipping? — Sustain The Art
Supply chain
- Chinese village produces 60% of world's replica oil paintings — Nikkei Asia
- The World's Art Factory Is in Jeopardy — Artsy
Mona Lisa, the Louvre and copyists
Live references, checked 11 August 2026
- Mona Lisa (La Gioconda) — Leonardo da Vinci, live-quoted at $214 for a 16 x 20 in (40.6 x 50.8 cm) hand-painted oil and €56 for a 50 x 70 cm print, the exact figures used throughout this article.
- The Luncheon of the Boating Party — Renoir, live-quoted at $320 for 24 x 36 in (61 x 91.4 cm) and $489 for 48 x 36 in (121.9 x 91.4 cm) hand-painted oil, matching the published price matrix exactly.
Data as of 11 August 2026. USD, ex-frame, ex-options, worldwide shipping included. Price tables in this category go stale fast — check the live order page before quoting these numbers back at anyone.
