Vintage Illustration Wall Art

What's in the collection

Ohara Koson's cockatoo hangs from a pomegranate branch and his egrets stand in shallow water. Ogawa Kazumasa hand-colours a lotus; Frederick Hulme lays out coreopsis in the manner of a plate book. Jean Bernard draws a cat from behind in a few pencil lines, then a cow's skull with the same unhurried attention, and Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita cuts a horned owl and a man's head into wood. Olivier Merson's Notre-Dame closes the group. The whole set sits inside fine art prints, at the opposite end of the range from the oils in old masters wall art.

One house style

These were drawn with line first and colour second, which is why they read cleanly at any size and never fight a room. Backgrounds are usually bare paper, so a white or natural frame keeps the whole sheet feeling like a sheet. They gang well: three or four in matching frames make a better wall than one alone, and they mix easily with the flat colour of art nouveau wall art.

Sizes, paper and framing

Every design is offered on archival matte paper in nine sizes from 8\" x 12\" to 30\" x 40\", plus A4-A1 for European frames, and on matte canvas either stretched on a wooden bar or set in a solid wood floating frame in white, black, espresso or natural. Printed with pigment-based archival inks, rated to resist fading for decades indoors.

Questions about vintage illustration wall art

Will the paper texture of the originals show?

Yes. Woodgrain, plate tone and pencil grain are all reproduced, and they become clearer at larger sizes.

What size works for a set of three?

12\" x 18\" or 16\" x 24\" in matching frames. The wall art size guide shows how a row of three spans a wall.