What to look for at close range

A good reproduction keeps the painting's edges honest. Look at brushstrokes, hatching, or fine texture in the original image first, then compare the print. If the print smooths those marks into a blur, the file was enlarged past its real resolution. That is the most common failure, and it shows up before the colour does. Hold the print under a lamp at a shallow angle. A matte surface should not reveal a grid of dots. A gloss surface should not show fingerprints or an uneven coating. These are visible cues, not opinions.

Colour is the second test. Le Marechal's work tends to rely on tonal contrast more than saturated colour, so a weak print will flatten the darks first. The deepest shadow should still carry detail, not collapse into a flat black patch. Skin tones and foliage should not shift toward an unnatural cast. If the print looks acceptable on a phone screen but dull in a room, the file was probably graded for a backlit display, not for paper or canvas. That mismatch is worth catching before payment.

Red flags for low-quality reproductions

Start with the listing itself. A seller that cannot name the print dimensions in millimetres is usually working from a file they have not checked. So is one that describes the image only as 'high resolution' without a number. A real reproduction comes from a file with enough pixels to hold detail at the printed size. If the seller cannot say what that size is, the buyer is guessing. Ask before ordering. The answer is usually short, and a careful seller can give it.

Watch the surface claims too. A print that is advertised as archival but priced far below the normal range for that size is often a standard poster passed off with a vague label. Paper weight matters more than most listings admit. A thin sheet curls at the edges and shows the wall through it. A heavier sheet lies flatter and tolerates handling. If a listing mentions the material without naming it, treat that as incomplete information rather than reassurance. The same caution applies to any promise that sounds broad and says nothing specific.

When a print is fine but the file is not

A well-made print can still disappoint if the source image was poor. That is not a printing fault, but it lands with the buyer all the same. If the original photograph is soft, cropped badly, or lit unevenly, the print will inherit those problems no matter how careful the output is. This is where a side-by-side comparison helps. Look at the original image at full size on a screen, then imagine it at the printed dimensions. If the detail already looks thin on screen, it will not improve on paper.

This is also where the choice of medium changes what you can get away with. A canvas print can hide some softness because the surface texture breaks up the eye, but it cannot rescue a file that is simply too small. A framed poster shows more because the surface is flatter and the eye reads it differently. Neither format fixes a weak source file. If you want a specific work, read the listing for the subject and the reproduction method together, not one without the other. what changes between canvas and poster is the practical question behind that choice.