Small Oil Portrait

Find the exact small oil portrait you’re shopping for in the variety available on 1stDibs. In our selection of items, you can find Contemporary examples as well as a Impressionist version. If you’re looking for a small oil portrait from a specific time period, our collection is diverse and broad-ranging, and you’ll find at least one that dates back to the 19th Century while another version may have been produced as recently as the 21st Century. Adding a small oil portrait to a room that is mostly decorated in warm neutral tones can yield a welcome change — find a piece on 1stDibs that incorporates elements of gray, black, brown and more. A small oil portrait from Geri Eubanks, Jennifer Hornyak, Thomas John Carlson, Lucie Corot and Dick Wray — each of whom created distinctive versions of this kind of work — is worth considering. Frequently made by artists working in oil paint, paint and canvas, these artworks are unique and have attracted attention over the years. A large small oil portrait can prove too dominant for some spaces — a smaller small oil portrait, measuring 10 high and 9 wide, may better suit your needs.

The average selling price for a small oil portrait we offer is $1,000, while they’re typically $600 on the low end and $4,780 for the highest priced.

An elegant and sophisticated decorative touch in any living space, portrait paintings have remained popular throughout the years and are widely loved pieces of art for display in many homes today.

Portrait paintings are at least as old as ancient Egypt, where realistic, lifelike depictions of the recently deceased — commonly known as “mummy portraits” — were painted on wooden panels and affixed to mummies as part of the burial tradition.

For centuries, painters have used portraiture as a means of expressing a subject’s nobility, societal status and authority. Portraits were given as gifts in Renaissance Europe, and a portrait artist might have been commissioned to help mark a significant occasion such as a wedding or a promotion to high office. Prior to the advent of photography, which eventually replaced painted portraits as a quicker and more efficient way of capturing a person’s essence, the subject of a portrait had to sit for hours until the painter had finished. And during the 18th century in particular, if an artist commissioned for a portrait struggled with how to adequately memorialize and capture a subject’s likeness, sometimes a portrait painting wasn’t completed for up to a year.

Whether it’s part of the gallery-style approach to your living-room or dining-room walls or merely inspiration as you devise an eye-grabbing color scheme in your home, a portrait painting is a timeless decorative object for any interior. A landscape painting or sculpture might give you the kind of insight into a specific region of the world or a different culture that you can ascertain only through art. Similarly, when you take the time to learn about the subject of a portrait painting that you bring into your home — the sitter’s history, the relationship between the sitter and the artist should one exist, the story of how the portrait came to be — that work can become intensely personal in addition to its place as an object for an art-hungry corner of your apartment or house.

On 1stDibs, visit a vast collection of famous portrait paintings or works by emerging artists. Search by medium to find the right portrait paintings for your home in oil paint, synthetic resin paint and more. Find portrait paintings in a variety of styles, too, including contemporary, Impressionist and Pop art, or search by artist to find unique works created by painters such as Mark Beard, Steve Kaufman and Montse Valdés.