The Price of Canvas

The Card Players by Paul Cézanne

The most expensive painting ever sold is Paul Cézanne’s The Card Players which was purchased in 2011 for over $250 million by the royal family of Qatar. This masterpiece of French Post Impressionism, finished in 1893, measures approximately 38 x 51 inches. What were they thinking?

A new canvas of approximately the same size can be purchased from Dickblick.com for $251.10. For an additional $82.13 you can order a master oil paint set with 8 colors, a painting knife, three brushes and an instructional DVD. With the canvas, the paint and couple of passes through the DVD, could’t they have created their own painting of two card players?

The difference is the art! The original painting was made by the hand of a creative genius who saw the world in an exciting new way. It was painted after decades of devotion to painting which started with drawing classes, was strongly influenced by the Impressionists and evolved into something completely new. 

Portraits by Natalie Licini

The difference is the art! That difference is important today when couples and families decide how to capture and preserve the memories of their senior year, their wedding and other important milestones. Most of us know a friend who owns a professional style camera and takes pretty good pictures. If they take some pictures and burn them to a DVD, we could use the kiosk at Walmart to order a photo book.

Albums by Black River Imaging

The difference is the art!  A handmade leather album crafted from portraits captured by a talented professional photographer reflects the years of devotion that the photographer dedicated to learning the art of photography. The portraits reflect the attention to detail required to capture the beauty of the event. The pages reflect the care the artist dedicated to selecting, cropping and retouching the images during the album design. The final album shows the loving care of the photographer and the craftsman who assembled and bound it all together.

Like any fine art, the value of portraits will increase with the passing of the years. Sharing memories with your friends, your children, and eventually your grandchildren, makes them grow richer each passing year.

Invite your friend with a camera to preserve the memories of your next birthday party. Hopefully you will have many more. Use a real professional photographer for those once-in-a lifetime events.

Aren’t your memories worth it?

Portraits by Dawn Shields