Complaint / Review
1st Art Gallery
The promise was quality, the reality was schlock

1st Art Gallery promises "museum quality handmade oil painting reproductions" and that its paintings "start and end with quality." It offers "100% satisfaction guaranteed."

However, what I received was schlock — just awful, really. When I asked for a refund, I was told that my request was "immoral." Odd, because I thought it was immoral to take a guy's money and then present him with crap. The painting was so amateurish as to be an embarrassment to the gallery.

Except that the gallery wasn't embarrassed.

The story: About 3 weeks before Christmas I ordered from 1st Gallery a reproduction of the painting "Joan of Arc" by French artist Jules Bastien-Lepage. My fiancee loves the original, which hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York, and both of us have been privileged to study "Joan" in person. It is breathtaking. I asked for the painting to be rushed because Christmas was drawing near, and I wanted to present it as a gift for my fiancee. I knew she would be excited.

My heart sank after the painting arrived and I removed it from its mailing tube. If it had been a horse, I would have shot it. The subtleties of the original are gone. The colors are wrong. Joan's face, so captivating and wondrous in Bastien-Lepage's work, looks to have been drawn by an 8-year-old. The spirits that should mystically hover behind Joan instead appear menacing and heavy, as if they are about to mug her instead of inspire her.

Quality? Non-existent.

Satisfaction? Non-existent.

Instead I was told via email that a refund was "not possible" and that I was being "immoral" to even "dare to ask" for a refund because I had asked for a rush order.

Any number of steps could have been taken to avoid this mess. 1st Gallery could have rejected my rush order. 1st Gallery could have assigned the painting to a better artist. 1st Gallery could have recognized that the finished product was inferior, notified me by email and offered the choice of another attempt by a better artist or my money back.

None of those things occurred.

I might just frame the hideous thing and display it in a prominent place in my house accompanied by a placard: God-awful artwork courtesy 1st Art Gallery on the internet.