A GUIDE TO BUYING ART ONLINE

From virtual galleries to social media platforms, the internet offers plenty of places to shop for paintings, sculptures and other artwork without breaking the bank.

- BY EMMA PATCH

"ART is not a luxury," Maya Angelou, the renowned author and poet, once said. But when it comes to buying artwork to enjoy in the comfort of your home, it can feel like one. Owning fine art may seem out of reach, limited to auction houses and high-end galleries. Online marketplaces, however, have made it easier and more affordable than ever to buy paintings, sculptures, photography and more without leaving your sofa.

A primary avenue to buy art online is through galleries such as The Artling.com, Zatista.com, Artfinder.com and Artsy.net. These sites sell pieces to meet a variety of tastes, with price tags that fit even modest budgets. You can typically filter your search by style and medium as well as by price to narrow down the thousands of pieces available for purchase.

Among drawings recently selling for $500 or less on Zatista, for example, was a luminous pastel seascape titled “Morning Light,” by Florida-based artist Roxene Sloate, for $325. Meanwhile, Artfinder listed an abstract photograph titled “On The Merry Go Round VIIa,” by U.K.-based photographer Adam Regan, for $535. Moving higher on the price scale, Artsy recently listed an abstract acrylic painting on cut pieces of hand-silkscreened canvas titled “Travels,” by Natalia Nicole Rodriguez of Puerto Rico, for $1,730. And you could find the hand-embroidered textile “Entre Dos Mundos,” by Spain-based artist María Sánchez Agustino, for $2,490 on The Artling.

While online platforms can’t replicate the experience of seeing art in person, they offer features that help buyers get a good idea of what it looks like, posting high-resolution photographs of pieces for sale and listing in-depth details on the work as well as artist bios. Some sites even provide tools that let you preview how a piece might look in your space. At The Artling, for example, you can upload a photograph of your room, enter the width and height of your wall, then drag an image of the art where you'd like to see it.