Gauguin's The Yellow Christ — Hand-Painted Oil Reproduction

Public-domain scan of the original shown for reference. Your canvas is hand-painted to order and photographed for your approval before shipping.

Price by canvas size

Every The Yellow Christ we paint is made to order, so the price tracks the canvas size and the amount of brushwork involved. These are the sizes our customers order most:

Estimates only — the final quote depends on your exact size, frame and shipping destination. Framing and shipping are quoted separately. Duties and import taxes are the buyer's responsibility (DAP).

Why symbolic colour has to be mixed and chosen, not printed

The yellow in this painting is not one yellow. It moves from a hot orange-yellow in the body of the figure to a cooler, almost green-yellow in the trees, and both are held apart by dark blue-black outlines that Gauguin borrowed from Japanese prints and from cloisonné enamel. That outlining — cloisonnism — is what stops the picture burning into a single glare.

A print gives you the idea of the yellow but not the structure: the outlines thin out, the zones merge, and the painting loses its strange calm. Hand-painted, the outlines are laid as deliberate dark strokes and the colour zones stay separate, which is what makes the image feel like a vision rather than a poster.

There is a test we encourage buyers to use on any "oil painting" they are offered: run a fingernail very gently across the surface. A hand-painted canvas feels like terrain. A print feels like glass.

The painting itself

The crucifix is a real object — a seventeenth-century wooden carving from the chapel of Tremalo near Pont-Aven — which Gauguin painted outdoors among the autumn trees with local women kneeling. He was thirty-five, broke, and about to leave for Tahiti; the picture is the manifesto of what he called synthetism, painting what you feel rather than what you see.

Buyers rarely choose it for the room's colour scheme and always for the presence: it is a picture that silences a wall. It suits a tall vertical format, and our painters keep the outlines confident and the women's faces simple — overworking the faces ruins the whole effect.

How our painters reproduce it

Our studio is in Dafen Oil Painting Village, Shenzhen — the centre of hand-painted oil reproduction for more than thirty years. A The Yellow Christ here is not traced, projected or transferred. The painter works freehand from a high-resolution reference, in layers:

1. Composition and ground. The canvas is toned and the main forms laid out in a thin underpainting, matching the original proportions to your chosen size.
2. Colour build-up. The palette is mixed in oil, not acrylic — only oil gives the same depth, slow blending and the slightly translucent glow the original depends on.
3. Impasto and surface passes. The signature strokes go on last, loaded with paint, following the direction of the original's brushwork. This is the slowest and most skilful stage.
4. Drying and inspection. Layered oil needs days to set properly. We let it. Then the finished canvas is checked against the reference for colour, composition and stroke character.

Where it hangs best

A yellow crucifix among autumn trees and Breton women in black — the painting that broke colour loose from nature. Rooms our customers choose most often:

• A tall wall in a study, library or dining room — it wants quiet around it
• Living room as the one serious piece in a calm, pale scheme
• Hallway or stair landing — vertical energy read in passing
• Hospitality — hotel lounges, chapels-turned-venues and art-led interiors

Framing

Choose gold to echo the original's warmth, matte black for a contemporary room, walnut for a traditional interior, or no frame at all as a gallery-wrap canvas ready to hang. Frames are quoted separately and packed with corner protection.

How ordering works

1. Tell us the painting, size and frame. WhatsApp is fastest — include a wall photo if you want sizing advice.
2. Get an exact quote. Usually within the hour, with the timeline confirmed in writing.
3. 70% deposit starts the painting. Paid by bank transfer, PayPal, credit card or Wise.
4. We send photographs of the finished painting. You review it before anything ships. If something clearly does not match your order notes, tell us and we adjust it.
5. Pay the 30% balance, then we ship. Tracked worldwide courier, rolled in a rigid tube or crated if framed.

FAQ