What are the 10 most popular paintings.  I want to sell hand made
reproductions, and am trying to figure out what the best paintings
will be.

---

Request for Question Clarification by kriswrite-ga on 30 Oct 2002 14:08 PST

By whose standard? Print sellers? Most asked about at museums? By public poll?

---

Clarification of Question by ghengis-ga on 30 Oct 2002 14:16 PST

By print sellers and public polls.

---

Request for Question Clarification by answerfinder-ga on 31 Oct 2002 04:29 PST

Dear ghengis-ga,
I have been unable to find any 'poll' which provides the information
you require. However, I have found seven sites which sell reproduction
masterpieces (poster, oil, photograph)AND either reveal their best
sellers or allow visitors to vote for their favourite pictures. There
is similarity in some of the lists in that the same pictures do
appear. Would this suit your purposes? If so I will start to collate
the results. Or would you prefer the links to the sites to review them
yourself?
answerfinder

---

Clarification of Question by ghengis-ga on 31 Oct 2002 16:32 PST

Can you provide me with both the list and the run down from the ones
you think are relivant?  That would help me greatly.

Dear ghengis-ga,
This has been an interesting exercise. Art is such a personal choice
and this makes your decision making process so hard.  I don’t know
what your intentions are with your market. It could be of great
importance as to whether it is local (state/country) or international;
old or young; popular or those with a certain knowledge of art; or
specific genre.

I have been unable to find a ‘poll’ which gives the answer directly. I
have found seven sites which sell reproduction masterpieces (poster,
oil, photograph) AND either reveal their best sellers or allow
visitors to vote for their favourite pictures or artist. There is
similarity in some of the lists in that the same pictures do appear. I
have also looked at forty personal web sites in which they state their
favourite paintings (often it’s only three or four paintings).

There was insufficient information to compile a definitive top 10.
My findings from this very limited ‘poll’ is as follows:
The most popular paintings appear to be:
Van Gogh – The Starry Night – extremely popular.
Klimt – The Kiss
Van Gogh – Sunflowers

There then follows (in particular order)
Vermeer - Girl with Pearl Earring
Paintings by Fredrich particularily Sea of Ice
Botticelli – Birth of Venus

The most popular artists by far is Van Gogh, followed by (in no
particular order) Dali, Monet, Degas, Gauguin, Chagall.

One web site has information on the top 30 artist searches conducted
on the site. The results are:
1 Pablo Picasso  
2 Vincent van Gogh 
3 Claude Monet  
4 Salvador Dali  
5 Leonardo da Vinci 
6 Henri Matisse  
7 Pierre-Auguste Renoir  
8 Edgar Degas 
9 Michelangelo Buonarroti  
10 Andy Warhol 
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/mostpopular.html

Interestingly Picasso’s art is not featured strongly in other sites.

Sites to visit are
http://www.paletaworld.org/Pinakes_suggest.asp
This one has a top 100 paintings based on the sites user stats.

Reproductions of masterpieces. Click on ‘Top Sales’
http://www.artcopy-munich.com/index-gb.htm

http://www.martem.com/paintings1.html
Voted by visitors. This site is slightly different from the others and
has some very different paintings.

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/mostpopular.html
The 30 most popular artist searches last month and  top 30 based on
poster sales

http://museumposter.com/best.cfm
Top 25 museum posters

http://www.allaboutart.com/prints/default.asp?cmd=list&by=alltime&top=32
Click on top sellers in various genres


http://www.art-prints-on-demand.com/index-partner-666.html
Click on ‘top 15 our best sellers’

http://www.artviewseum.com/cgi-bin/origprodlist.cgi?cat=oil_bestseller&cart_idname=

I hope this very limited poll is of some help to you. 

Please ask for clarification of any part of the research, or if the
links do not work, before rating the answer.

Good luck with the painting.
answerfinder-ga

Search strategy
Variations on top, masterpieces, favourites, favorites, paintings, 10,
20 etc., reproductions
For personal web pages: ‘favorite paintings’
://www.google.com/search?q=%22favorite+paintings%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&start=20&sa=N

For many years I owned an art gallery and framing shop, so I was
attracted to your question. In the course of that venture, I had the
opportunity to order and frame many prints and posters from various
companies. No one print company handles the prints of all artists or
museums, so any top ten list compiled by an individual company will
only include the prints that they offer.

Lieberman’s is a one stop source that offers the prints of all of the
major companies, so I first went to their site to see if they compile
any top lists. They offer a list of their top sellers, and they
further customize the lists to reflect regional favorites. In addition
to paintings, however, their lists reflect the fact that they also
sell other types of posters (pop art, photography, etc.). However, you
will note that there are several paintings that reoccur on all of the
lists, national as well as regional

Vettriano--Singing Butler
Wyeth--Master Bedroom
Vettriano--Dance Me to the End of Love
Van Gogh--Starry Night

Source:
Lieberman’s Gallery
http://www.liebermans.net/TopTen/topten.html



You may be interested in the following website, Old Master Paintings
hand painted by museum restorers. You may be interested in seeing what
paintings they have chosen to reproduce.

Source:
Old Master Paintings
http://www.artsstudio.com/

Good luck in your project.


Regards,

Beth

you're not going to find a "most popular. that is a personnal choice. 
so,,,,personnal likes/dislikes aside, i can think of these as highly
visible paintings.

van gogh....starry night
dali....persistence of memory
da vinci....mona lisa
michelangelo...sistine chapel(god creating man)
picasso....three musicians
klimt....the kiss
rembrandt...the night watch
whistler....whistler's mother
warhol...campbell soup 

any painting by pollack or mondrian...they're all alike

any ballet painting by degas

the head prtrait of george washington that is unfinished on the
bottom(for americans, this is well known)