Bring Family History to Life with Custom Oil Paintings

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.