Monday, July 14, 2008

Question from Linda - Small prints of portraits

I have just discovered your site, and I'm thrilled! I've been reading everything I can find about the Tudors since I was a teenager, and can never get enough. Now that I'm nearing age 50, I've been branching out -- I've started to read more about the Wars of the Roses! My friends don't understand . . .

Anyway, I recently moved to a larger place, and now I have some wall space to fill. I have always dreamed of having a Tudor wall -- small reproductions of portraits of the fascinating people I've been reading about for all this time. But I have been unable to locate a source where I could buy small colour reproductions. I've looked at the UK National Gallery site, but the smallest size they reproductions they offer are too large for what I envisage. I'm thinking more along the lines of postcard-sized portraits.

Does anybody know where I could find a source for these?

Thanks in advance for all suggestions.

Linda
in Ottawa, Ontario

5 comments:

Lara said...

I'm glad you found the site Linda! I've been hearing the "my friends don't understand" thing for so many years, which is why I started the email list, penpal listings, blogs, etc. :)

As far as your question, that's a good one, since like you've discovered, most sites seem to have poster-sized prints. I have a bunch of postcards of portraits, but I've bought them all while visiting museums and properties over in the UK, so I'm not sure if there is a way to buy them without actually traveling overseas. Hopefully someone will have some ideas. The one alternative I can think of is to find a cheap copy of some books with good reproductions and take them apart to frame some of the larger images.

Anonymous said...

Here is something you might try: Go to http://www.marileecody.com/images.html, where you will find high resolution images of a wide variety of Tudor-era figures. You can "right click" on any of these images to download them to your computer. You can then save them to a CD and take the CD to Walgreen's or some other photo processing place and have each of them printed as 3x5 or 4x6 photos. For that matter, you can do a Google Images search for any of the names you have in mind and capture images that way, then have those printed. Most portraits and paintings from the Tudor period are now in the public domain and not really copyright protected (though some galleries and museums do still claim reproduction rights). Short of that, you might email the National Portrait Gallery Gift Shop (www.npg.org.uk) and ask them if they can send you a selection of postcards of Tudor-era portraits.

Tamise said...

I work in London and could get you postcards from the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery if you want?

If you are interested and to discuss details, please email me at:

ladyjanegreyreference@yahoo.co.uk

Anonymous said...

Wow!! Thank you for the lovely welcome, Lara, and thank you all for such helpful, speedy replies!

Historian, you've made an excellent suggestion -- I don't know why I didn't think of it myself.

And Tamise, thank you so much for your generous offer. I will most definitely be in touch in the near future!

Linda

Anonymous said...

You can look on Ebay. i've seen some there.