A reproduction allows more people to experience a famous landscape without requiring them to travel to a museum. Reproductions can help decorate a home or commercial space, bring fine art to public school students and provide art students with a study subject. They dress the stage in the entertainment world. Economically, a high-quality reproduction costs a fraction of the seldom-available original, opening ownership to a wider range of art lovers.
An oil reproduction displays the same texture as the original. The hand-painted reproduction goes through the same steps, so the brushstrokes and paint layers provide a similar effect. Minor variations can occur because a human hand copies the landscape. The reproduction may be the same size as the original, a proportionally resized copy or a custom size. While the original artist's signature often will be reproduced, the copier will identify the painting as a reproduction somewhere on the piece.
Mechanical copies of a painting provide a relatively affordable form of art ownership. Prints can use several background materials. Prints on canvas offer the closest-to-original feeling while art paper or glossy poster paper can offer a cost advantage. Because the print usually comes from a photograph of the original, the reproduction maintains the original's colors and proportions, but may sacrifice some fine detail. Giclee prints use inkjet printers to reproduce the image rather than older forms of printing.
A landscape can adorn many products. Look at room-size wallpaper murals, for example. An entrepreneur may divide the original image to create a triptych. An art book shares reproductions in a smaller size. Even a museum's poster advertising an exhibit may incorporate a portion of a landscape in another format. Such uses risk losing detail in a miniature or becoming blurry in an expanded form.