Original canvas or reproduction: what you really buy when you hang a painting

A poster is a paper print, produced in unlimited runs, often framed. It costs 20 to 60 euros, dresses a wall, gets replaced. A canvas print is the same file printed on stretched fabric, sometimes varnished to mimic relief: 60 to 200 euros, the illusion of paint from a distance.

A numbered edition is an art reproduction in a limited run, signed by the artist: 150 to 800 euros depending on artist and run. It is a copy, but rare and authenticated. The original work, finally, is the canvas painted by the artist's hand, once: prices start around 400 euros for a small format by an emerging artist and have no ceiling.

A reproduction is flat. Whatever the print quality, light slides over it evenly. A painted canvas has thickness: brushstrokes catch the light, impasto casts shadows, dry-worked areas show the weave. The painting changes with the hour and the angle. That is why you still look at it after ten years.

On Golden Brown, from the IS × SEY Maison series, the black around the window was left raw: you see the brush, the reworking, the material. On a print of the same image that black would be a flat field. The difference does not photograph well, it is lived in the room.

A poster and a canvas print are decorative objects: they depreciate from purchase, yellow in the light, and get replaced when taste changes. A numbered edition keeps a market value as long as the artist exists, but remains one copy among others.

An original work with a numbered certificate of authenticity is an asset: it can be resold, passed on, insured. It does not depreciate like furniture. If the artist progresses it gains value; otherwise it keeps at least that of a unique object nobody else owns. Above all, you do not tire of it like an image seen a thousand times elsewhere.

Not for every wall. A hallway, a guest room, an office redone every two years are fine with a good print. The wall you look at every day, facing the sofa, above the table, facing the bed, deserves the object you do not replace.

For a first purchase, a small original between 400 and 900 euros is the fairest entry point: the price of a fine light fixture or an armchair, for an object that exists only once. The IS × SEY Maison series was conceived in that spirit: six canvases painted once, from 490 to 890 euros, signed, numbered 1/6 to 6/6, delivered with their certificate. When one is sold, it does not come back.