Commissioned Art,
Not Copies.
Most “custom portrait” services do one thing: they copy your photograph as faithfully as possible. That’s a real skill, and Sébastien Rieu does it too. But there is a second craft, and it’s a different job entirely — starting from the real and making something that did not exist before. All art starts from the real. The question is whether it stops there.
Portrait or creation?
Both are hand-made, both start from your photograph, both are signed. They are simply not the same purchase — and they shouldn’t cost the same.
| The Faithful Portrait | The Creation | |
|---|---|---|
| What you buy | A likeness. The person, the pet or the car, rendered as they are — recognizable at a glance. | An artwork. Your subject reinterpreted through the artist’s own language: cubist facets, pin-up codes, a monochrome parti pris, a jungle borrowed from Rousseau. |
| The brief | “Make it look like him.” | “Make something of him that I could never have imagined.” |
| Medium | India ink & watercolor, or graphite pencil, on art paper | Acrylic on Canson paper or on canvas, sometimes with colored pencil |
| Price | $95 – $295 pets $95 · vehicles $195 · portraits from $195 · paintings from $295 |
From $495 on Canson paper · from $895 on canvas |
| Where to go | Realistic portraits → | The gallery below → |
Twelve paintings, one hand
Cinema, pin-up and cubism — every one of these started from a real image and ended up somewhere else. Acrylic on paper or canvas, painted in Bordeaux. Click any painting to see it up close.
A Spanish pin-up broken into colored planes, in the lineage of Cubism — the face fractured, never illegible. This is the exact register a creation commission works in.
Sold the day after it was finished
A second variation on the same problem: keep every ounce of the subject’s sensuality while fracturing her geometry. Cubism was never meant to be pretty — here it is.
A vintage pin-up in Levi’s, perched on a Buick. The largest piece in the gallery and the only one painted on canvas — American iconography, French hand.
A young woman under a bridal veil, where the lipstick is the only true color on the sheet. The artist’s own favorite painting — and the clearest proof of what restraint can do.
A blue monochrome, deliberately against the grain of everything else here. One chromatic decision, and the subject tips over into strangeness.
The Japanese model, transplanted into a naive jungle borrowed from Henri Rousseau, “le Douanier” (1844–1910). Two centuries and two continents in one sheet.
A head-on collision between two American imageries: the calendar pin-up in the golden-age tradition of Gil Elvgren, and the horror movie. Same pose, very different afternoon.
A second take on the actress, this time fully committed to the pin-up codes, with acrylic highlights lifting the pencil.
Born in Tunis in 1938, revealed by Visconti’s The Leopard and Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West. A face that carries half of European cinema.
A tighter crop on the most painted face in France. The hair and the pout do all the anchoring; everything else can move.
From the 1964 spy farce by Georges Lautner. Three paintings in this gallery come from that one film — Darc’s character is simply that graphic.
A second homage to Georges Lautner’s cinema. The 1965 sketch film brought together Mireille Darc, Bernard Blier and Louis de Funès.
How it works
Your photograph — a person, a car, a face from a film still. Plus anything that matters: a color, a memory, a mood.
Cubist facets, pin-up codes, monochrome, a borrowed setting — or leave it open and let the artist propose.
A small preparatory drawing comes first. Nothing goes on the final sheet before you’ve seen where it’s heading.
Acrylic on Canson paper from $495, on canvas from $895. Signed, shipped from France — $35 flat, customs included, about 2 weeks.
Complimentary HD video included
Your artwork, and an HD video of its creation
Every original artwork shipped from France comes with a complimentary short HD video of its creation: watch my hand at work, from the first marks to the finished piece.
Before you commission
What’s the difference between a portrait and a creation?
A portrait aims at likeness: the person, pet or car rendered as they are, recognizable at a glance — explore the pencil portraits page. A creation starts from the same photograph but reinterprets it through the artist’s own visual language — cubist planes, pin-up codes, a monochrome decision. You are buying a point of view, not a resemblance. Creations start at $495.
Why does a creation cost more than a portrait?
Because copying is a skill and inventing is a different one. A creation involves preparatory studies, chromatic decisions and days of painting where nothing guarantees the result in advance. “Amanda, Cubist Pin-Up” sold the day after it was finished — that is the market, not an estimate.
Can you do a cubist portrait of a real person from our photo?
Yes — that is precisely what this page offers. Send the photograph, and the face is rebuilt in colored planes while staying unmistakably the person. It works particularly well for anniversaries and milestone gifts, where a literal copy of an old photograph would feel flat.
Is any of this made with AI?
No. Every painting on this page is acrylic on physical paper or canvas, painted by hand by Sébastien Rieu, French artist for 25 years, seen on France 3 national TV. No AI, no filter, no digital manipulation, at any step. Progress photos of your commission are available on request.
Are the paintings in this gallery for sale?
Some are still available as originals, others have been sold. Ask on the contact page about a specific piece — and note that any of them can also be reproduced as an art print.
All art starts from the real.
The question is whether it stops there. Tell Sébastien what you want made — and how far you’d like him to take it.
Commission a Creation →
