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Family photo albums can be a wonderful storehouse of memories, but even after the invention of the camera, it's been hard to deny that the art of painting brings something unique to the table: a quality that even the most sophisticated descendants of the daguerrotype can't capture. As John Constable once put it: "Painting is but another word for feeling." Although it's long been recognized that a great photograph can form the basis of a powerful painting—the first experiments like this go back to the 19th century if not before—it's also true that in the hands of a skilled artist, a painted portrait can bring emotional resonance to an image unlike any other medium.

As Osip Brik put it almost a hundred years ago:

The painter's task certainly does not consist in showing an object as it is but rather in recreating it in a painting according to different, purely painterly laws. What do we care for how an object looks? Let observers and photographers deal with that, we – the painters – make pictures in which nature is not the subject but merely an initial impetus for ideas. The painter not only has the right to change reality, it is virtually his duty to do so . . .

Now, what if you were to take this principle up a notch further? For example, by giving your family a memory not just preserved in the vivid medium of the custom oil portrait, but also joined to some of the most heroic themes of art? The results can be both striking and witty, a lively contribution to your family's conversation about art for years to come: and you only have to look at a few of the entries on our example page to see why. Each of our custom portraits takes a photographic reference from you and combines it with an artistic or pop culture classic to create a painting with a fresh vitality and a fresh feeling.

It's easy to bring this kind of artistic talent to your own walls at home with a custom oil painting from Nobilified. Do you have a photo of a loved one at home, perhaps a parent or grandparent you'd like to see turned into a hand made painting? With a source photograph and an idea of how you want it to be transformed into a magnificent piece of art that your family will treasure for years to come, you have what you need to bring your family history life through painting.

Simply submit your photo to Nobilified, choose an image from our galleries that you'd like to see it combined with, and let us connect you with an artist who can deliver the style of painting you need. Alternatively, if you'd like to simply see a photo transformed into a painting, you can use our photo-to-painting program to see your photographic images transported to canvas. Either way, our artists will recreate your photo as an entirely new private masterpiece that will be a conversation piece for friends and family for years to come. It's really that simple.

Villa de Campo in the Dominican Republic has teamed up with Nobilified to create a unique art and hospitality experience.  Guests will be given the opportunity to have custom oil portraits of themselves painted as keepsakes of their holiday.

Some of us love pets so much that we are happy to call them part of the family. They are beautiful companions who don't talk but express themselves through actions which makes us develop a deep affection with them. There is no better way to show love than to commission a pet portrait to decorate your walls.

In celebration of the Royal wedding, Nobilified teamed up with "The Living Room", an Australian TV show to let Meaghan know about the Royal tradition of sitting down for a hand painted oil portrait of herself.  Our paintings were declared to be "Hot" instead of "Not". Watch the paintings being unveiled to the hosts here!

The tiniest player in the current feast of royal wedding pageantry is little Louis Arthur Charles, who has been big news since his name was bestowed on him only a few days ago and who is now the subject of multiple viral stories already. (One of the funniest has since the Harry Potter fansite Pottermore lay claim to him as being "named after" a trio of iconic Weasleys from the universe of the Harry Potter novels.) Little Louis is also a timely reminder of a fine tradition of childrens' royal portraiture which is a vital part of the custom painting galleries of Nobilified. Here, we look at a few favourites.

The occasion of a Royal wedding brings to mind a cultural treasure-trove of royal romance tales. It's a topic that brings together power, pageantry and the most intimate kind of human drama all in one package; a subject that forms the core of a thousand fairy tales and not a few real-life dramas, too. In advance of the upcoming royal wedding, we take a tour through some of the best love stories royals have given rise to on screens both big and small. You'll often find these stories' protagonists in our portrait gallery, too, and excellent subjects for our unique custom paintings.

The British royals may be the biggest proof of our ongoing cultural love affair with royalty, but they're far from the only example. Another show is lighting up the Netflix airwaves today – Medici: Masters of Florence – following the fortunes of a great banking family that eventually became a royal family with ducal titles. The first Medici Duke, one of the popular faces in our photo-to-painting portrait gallery, was Alessandro de'Medici.

With graduation season almost upon us, it's a time to contemplate some artwork that brings to mind the philosopher and the scholar in us all. Today we go by way of a famous sculpture by Rodin called the Thinker, and talk about its connection to the unique pictures-to-painting work of Nobilified.

The adage "everything old is new again" has never been truer than in the internet age. It's one of the facts that makes the Nobilified vision possible, but every once in a while we have a fresh reminder of just how true it is, and of just how many forms that truth can take. Today's reminder is a famous French painter whose career spanned the end of the Bourbon monarchy and the rise of the French Revolution long before we were creating oil paintings from photos.

Turning your pictures into paintings, transforming your everday life into the Epic and enabling you to bring it home to hang on your walls as top-notch, fun-loving art: this is was Nobilified is all about. We are, truly, about what is best in life. Let us create your most epic painting from a photograph today, and we're sure you'll agree.