frequently asked questions

Questions : Are your Reproductions Legal?

In a word, yes, all our reproductions are perfectly legitimate.

The arts copyright law (©) encourages the creative efforts of artists, and others by securing the exclusive right to reproduce works and derive income from them. This means that in the UK and most of Europe, an artist’s work can only be reproduced after his/her work(s) have passed into the public domain: (Artist’s life plus 70 years after death). This time frame differs slightly for Australia (Artist’s life plus 50 years after death).

Copyright is a very delicate issue for us at Henry Pelham Fine Art, and something that we take very seriously. Before 1978 the law was not very clear about what was protected and for how long. A blanket protection of sorts was offered to anything, whether published or not, before and after 1978. This, as previously stated, means that any artwork is covered for 70 years after the death of the artist.

So for us to be able to take commissions on works by artists such as Picasso, Dali, Matisse or Klimt for instance, then we must first attempt to seek permission from the copyright owner (usually the family and/or deceased artist’s estate).

However, we’re sure that you’ll have noticed wherever you go, you can see paintings and prints of Picasso's and other 20th Century artists in restaurants, on calendars, t-shirts, magazines – the list is endless. Does this mean that the artist's estate is collecting royalties from each of these violations? Unfortunately for their bank manager the answer is no.

Simply put, the copyright of famous items or people are almost impossible to police. What this means is that in the majority of cases, anything that is viewed as a ‘harmless’ violation is tolerated.

If you were to name yourself Pablo Picasso, reproduce his paintings and travel the world claiming them as your own, then this is a different matter, as the "harmless" line has been crossed. If you choose to decorate your house with a reproduced painting of Picasso's, then this is comfortably on the "harmless" side of the line.

At Henry Pelham Fine Art, we try and take a moralistic approach. In every case of attempting a reproduction of a living or more recently deceased artist, we will contact the artist or estate to ask permission to work on the painting. In some cases this is given, in most however we unfortunately never receive a reply. Where no reply is received we need to ask ourselves these important questions:

1) Will the reproduction likely offend the artist/estate?

2) Will the reproduction decrease the value of the original painting?

3) Has the artist/estate set a precedent for reproductions in the past?

In the case of Picasso, the estate has set a precedent for his paintings, and that is that if points 1 and 2 above are not broken, then reproductions are tolerated. We will of course monitor and adjust our policy accordingly based upon any new suggestions or comments from the estate.

So, in short, should you wish us to commission a painting by an artist whose estate or family hold the copyright, we shall endeavor to contact the Estate or Family of the deceased artist to ask for written permission to reproduce his/her work and only then will we proceed to carry out such commissions.

We must stress that our reproductions are just that, reproductions, and we would never attempt to pass them off as Originals. This would be fraudulent and totally illegal.

Finally we would state this as a redoubtable fact "It is far better to have a good Reproduction on your wall and show your appreciation of Fine Art than to have a bad Original and allude to your ignorance of the matter".

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