Old World Prints

Find a variety of old world prints available on 1stDibs. Finding the perfect Old Masters or Contemporary examples of these works for your space is difficult — today, we have a vast range of variations and more on offer. These items have long been popular, with older editions for sale from the 18th Century and newer versions made as recently as the 21st Century. If you’re looking to add old world prints that pop against an otherwise neutral space in your home, the works available on 1stDibs include that feature elements of brown, beige, gray, orange and more. Many versions of these artworks are appealing in their rich colors and composition, but Shane Russeck, Carel Allard, Philipp Clüver, Bernard Picart and Stafford Ives Veale produced especially popular works that are worth a look. Each of these unique pieces was handmade with extraordinary care, with artists most often working in archival pigment print, pigment print and engraving. If space is limited, there are small old world prints measuring 10.63 across, while our inventory also includes pieces up to 90 inches across to better suit those in the market for large iterations.

The average selling price for old world prints we offer is $1,600, while they’re typically $239 on the low end and $8,000 for the highest priced.

Decorating with fine art prints — whether they’re figurative prints, abstract prints or another variety — has always been a practical way of bringing a space to life as well as bringing works by an artist you love into your home.

Pursued in the 1960s and ’70s, largely by Pop artists drawn to its associations with mass production, advertising, packaging and seriality, as well as those challenging the primacy of the Abstract Expressionist brushstroke, printmaking was embraced in the 1980s by painters and conceptual artists ranging from David Salle and Elizabeth Murray to Adrian Piper and Sherrie Levine.

Printmaking is the transfer of an image from one surface to another. An artist takes a material like stone, metal, wood or wax, carves, incises, draws or otherwise marks it with an image, inks or paints it and then transfers the image to a piece of paper or other material.

Fine art prints are frequently confused with their more commercial counterparts. After all, our closest connection to the printed image is through mass-produced newspapers, magazines and books, and many people don’t realize that even though prints are editions, they start with an original image created by an artist with the intent of reproducing it in a small batch. Fine art prints are created in strictly limited editions — 20 or 30 or maybe 50 — and are always based on an image created specifically to be made into an edition.

Many people think of revered Dutch artist Rembrandt as a painter but may not know that he was a printmaker as well. His prints have been preserved in time along with the work of other celebrated printmakers such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol. These fine art prints are still highly sought after by collectors.

“It’s another tool in the artist’s toolbox, just like painting or sculpture or anything else that an artist uses in the service of mark making or expressing him- or herself,” says International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) vice president Betsy Senior, of New York’s Betsy Senior Fine Art, Inc.

Because artist’s editions tend to be more affordable and available than his or her unique works, they’re more accessible and can be a great opportunity to bring a variety of colors, textures and shapes into a space.

For tight corners, select small fine art prints as opposed to the oversized bold piece you’ll hang as a focal point in the dining area. But be careful not to choose something that is too big for your space. And feel free to lean into it if need be — not every work needs picture-hanging hooks. Leaning a larger fine art print against the wall behind a bookcase can add a stylish installation-type dynamic to your living room. (Read more about how to arrange wall art here.)

Find fine art prints for sale on 1stDibs today.