I’ve talked at length about my love of thrifting, but here on the blog I tend to focus on clothing purchases. While we do source almost all our clothing and footwear from second-hand shops, our thrifting does NOT end there. You name it, we’ve likely at least considered buying said item second-hand. (Don’t worry – I buy all our toothbrushes new. There are limits.)
One of our favourite things to source second-hand is art.
John and I both love art. We love visiting galleries together (I was beaming when I read J’s post that included a picture at MusĂ©e de l’Orangerie, I just talked about the Louvre this week), we love looking at art, we love discussing art, and – perhaps miraculously – we tend to enjoy similar aesthetics. (If we were ever fabulously wealthy, I think John would move heaven and earth to own a van Gogh.)
Inspired by Daria’s post, I thought I’d take a little tour around our home and highlight some thrifted art (I’d say this is just under half the thrifted pieces in our home?).
Let’s start with my favourite.
This painting hangs over the mantle in our main living space. I love the colours, the movement, the child’s face turned to the outside world, the mother’s face hidden by her floppy hat; the warmth conveyed in texture, colour, and season – it looks like a delightfully sunny day at the beach with nary a flurry or puffer coat in sight. This painting was under $30.
Spoiler alert ahead of tomorrow, the mantle now looks like this:
I love this painting. It’s probably my second favourite thrifted piece.
I find this painting extremely soothing and it makes me smile every time I look at it – which is often since it hangs in the entryway of our home. It was under $25.
There’s not much to say in terms of commentary but I really like this picture – the colours, the frame, the simplicity. I think this one was about $15 and it hangs in our dining room.
Pictures do not do this set justice. The reflection of the light on the glass was making for horrible photos, hence the odd angle from below. This is a lovely trio – and we bought each picture for $3.99 at a thrift store before having them professionally matted (paying extra for the black trimmed interior which I’ve done twice for custom matting and LOVE) and then plopped put them in inexpensive IKEA frames. We found these shortly after our trip to Paris and it felt meant to be! These hang in the master bedroom.
John spotted this sketch at a local thrift store (I think it was about $10) – he loved it right away and it hung in our house for years before we looked more closely and discovered it was a historic home in Charleston, South Carolina. The Rutledge House, completed in the late 1700s, was built for John Rutledge – one of the signatories of the American Constitution! It’s now a public inn and we visited in May 2022 and took pictures of the actual site.
Cool, huh?!
Okay, so this wasn’t a thrift store find, but it WAS a yard sale find. We paid $75 for this print of the Alex Colville – a famous Canadian painter – Horse and Train. It’s not my favourite Colville work, but beggars can’t be choosers. Fun fact: Colville graduated from the same university where John and I completed our undergraduate degrees…and eventually ended up living (he passed away in 2013) in the Nova Scotian town where we now live.
Can you spot our print in this outdoor gallery?
Chalk this Matisse print up under the It’s Growing On Me category. John loves this picture (we paid less than $20) but I made him hang it in the guest room so I don’t see it regularly. I was not a big fan. But, over time, I’ve started to both tolerate and enjoy it. We got to see a wonderful Matisse exhibit in Denmark many years ago; he’s not in my top picks for artists, but I can appreciate the aesthetic and it definitely hits the mark in terms of colour and whimsy!
Your turn. Have you ever purchased art second-hand? What’s your favourite art piece in your home and why? Do you like art galleries or find them boring? Do you have a favourite artist or style of art? If you could have one of these thrifted art pieces in your home, which one would you choose?
Header photo by Martin de Arriba on Unsplash
Sophie
Love these! The beach pic and the landscape are also my favourites. My husband has also bought us some beautiful thrifted art pieces (he’s the thrifter -op-shopper as we say in Australia – in our family). We have a big print of a Van Gogh (fishing boats on beach), lovely paintings of scenes in Venice and Hong Kong, and some more woven/fabric style art. Can’t remember what each piece cost but wouldn’t have cost more than $30 or $40 each.
Elisabeth
Op-shopper (I assume that’s short for opportunity?) Love it!
Sophie
Yes, short for opportunity shop. But no one calls them that in Aus, it’s just “Op Shop”. 🙂
mbmom11
I love art museums but haven’t been to one in well over 20 years. However a few places I go do have small selections of art. We have an oil painting a friend gave us for our wedding which I love, and a college roommate gave me a print of an Eiffel tower picture which my mom “stole” from me and I only got hack recently. I tend to like impressionist type pictures, but I can admire a lot of art. (I don’t necessarily want it in my home.)
Elisabeth
I hope you get to go to an art museum soon <3
And yes to enjoying many forms of art but not necessarily wanting them in my own living space. SO true.
sarah
Love your cozy Christmas mantle, and you find THE BEST STUFF at thrift stores!!
Elisabeth
I do love me a good thrift store 🙂
Nicole MacPherson
I love that second painting!
I love all the art in my house, but none of it is thrifted. My favourite is my Desiderata, which was my grandma’s, but we reframed it, so it feels fresh. When we moved my friend gifted me with two copies of paintings that she had done, that I had admired. I also love the Three Sisters painting we have. Hmm, what else. Oh! We have a little painting that came from the smallest gallery in Amsterdam. It was just the tiniest little place, and it always makes me happy to see it.
Elisabeth
How lovely to have pictures painted by a friend.
And coming home with artwork from travels is something we do on every single trip (and those are some of my favourite pieces; just not pictured here today since they aren’t thrifted and are purchased “full price.”)
Ohhh…I could do a post on Art We Bought on Vacations!
Shelly
I like art but I don’t love it to the point of buying any to have in my house. I have pictures of Ireland that we took on our honeymoon enlarged and hanging in our living room. We bought black Ikea frames. I have pictures of calla lilies that were given to me and are a favourite flower as well as pictures of family and the kids.
In a lower level living room my husband put up prints of James Dean, Marilyn Munro and others from hat era. That’s his thing so I go with it.
Our Christmas tree and decorations will go up this Friday!
Elisabeth
Hooray for Christmas trees and decorations. It really does feel cozy.
IKEA frames are my go-to for so many reasons. I also know some people buy thrifted art just for the frames! If you don’t like the picture but love the frame, it can be a REALLY nice frame for not much money that can be reused in another context. And yeesh – frames at a place like Michaels are EXPENSIVE. As much as I love IKEA, I will say that their plexiglass frames are a nuisance and can’t really be cleaned easily. It is what I use because they’re so accessible but the pieces with glass frames are 100x easier to clean!
Jenny
I like the Matisse! And I also like the one you said is your favorite, AND I love the decorated mantle (did Abby do that?). We don’t have a lot of art in our house right now. We have a painting my brother-in-law painted which I love, and a Van Gogh print in one of the bathrooms. And we have an abstract painting that I inherited- it hung over our fireplace for my entire childhood. It’s hanging in our living room right now and my husband wants to put it somewhere else (he doesn’t like it.)
I used to love going to museums but I haven’t gone in a long time. I do want more art in our home but I never know where to get it. I guess I should check out thrift shops!
Elisabeth
A did do the mantle 🙂
van Gogh seems to be a popular guy today. We have several van Gogh prints in our house too (he’s our favourite artist).
Thrift shops *can* be a great place to find inexpensive art; and in a broad array of styles.
Sarah
Great art! You always find the best stuff. I look at the art section every time I go to the thrift store, but I’ve never found anything other than faded 80s prints or “live laugh love” signs. All of your selections are similar in terms of color and style, I can see how they would really work in your house.
Elisabeth
There are a lot of Live, Laugh, Love signs – haha! None of which have made it into my home.
NGS
I love art galleries. LOVE them. But we don’t have much art hanging up in our house – I’d rather have family photos up.
I love the Horse and Train print, though. So fun!
Ernie
My favorite is the mansion in South Carolina. So cool. I love that you went to South Carolina and saw the mansion too. We do not have thrifted artwork in our home. We have a painting that was my grandparents. It hangs over our living room couch. It’s pretty spectacular and I suspect it is worth a lot. Most spaces in our house are decorated with photos of our kids. Those make me super happy. I also stetched each of them when they were babies. The sketches were used as their baptismal invites. Those sketches are framed and hanging in the upstairs hallway.
Elisabeth
Photos of the kids are the best art!!! And I love the sketches. What a sweet capture of a certain time of life. They sound BEAUTIFUL. And how incredible YOU did it <3
Tobia | craftaliciousme
I envy you now. I don’t have any art in our home. For some reason we never get any. I want to though.
My style would be more towards the sketch and the Paris water colors.
However the mantel piece has some vibe that I can appreciate.
Buying a piece of art is actually on my bucket-list and I have finally some wall space for it in my office. So it’s a project for 2024. I had never thought of getting art in a thrift store but that is an excellent idea. I will check those too.
Elisabeth
I do love the look of bare walls, but we definitely have A LOT of art in our house!
Beckett @ Birchwood Pie
I’d never heard of Alex Colville, but Horse and Train is really speaking to me. I’ve never actually purchased art per se, but I’ve picked up a couple of prints in thrift shops that I like. My other art source is from family. I’m related to an artist who studied with Diego Rivera in the 20s. He was not a household name, but he did well and always made his living from art, so he was legit. The pieces that have come down to me are a large painting that was done in his “post Diego Rivera” style and two small pieces from his “I’m just a guy in art school” style. One is an 8″ x 11″ landscape and it’s simple but I could stare at it for hours – and I have.
Elisabeth
There is a course at Harvard where you have to look at the same piece of art for THREE HOURS. Part of the exercise is to see how your view/interpretation changes over that span of time.
Corey
Thrifted art is my FAVORITE! I love estate sales for collecting art. My best find is a really close-up of a skier’s face that was done by the woman whose house it was. Her kids were thrilled by how much I wanted it.
Elisabeth
Ohhh. Brilliant! Estate sales are not something I go to very often, but that would be a great place to find art. And that picture you mention sounds fascinating and what a sweet memory for her kids, too, to know someone was genuinely thrilled to buy a piece their mother had painted <3
J
The picture over your mantle is beautiful, it has a certain Mary Cassatt vibe to me.
Art is difficult in our house. I love Impressionists and Post Impressionists (love the Matisse), but my husband likes very stark Modern art. So we don’t buy much. We have a print of a photo of San Francisco, we have some things our daughter painted in college, and we have photographs. And a few things we have inherited. If we had a bigger house, perhaps we would just say, “I’ll decorate this half, you decorate the other”. Sigh.
I LOVE art museums. My step-mom gives me money for Christmas and my birthday (which is the week after Christmas) and one of my gifts for several years was a membership to the Fine Art Museums in San Francisco. I found I would go more often if I had a membership. I stopped during the pandemic, my desire to support the museums was outweighed by my not wanting to spend money on something I couldn’t do. Now I’m waiting until they have some upcoming exhibits that I really want to see before I dive back into that. But maybe this will be the year?
Elisabeth
Well you have NAILED the downstairs (?) bathroom! Great art and amazing colour and tying in the pussy willows in the curtains!
I just saw your Paris post. My next one is all about Musee d’Orsay. It’s such an incredible museum!!!!
Daria
Thank you for the pingback, Elisabeth!! I loved seeing the pieces in your house and learn more about art and artists. I absolutely adore the beach painting above your fireplace. It’s a mother with two kids- like you and I! I love it. Thank you for this glimpse into your home <3
Meike
I like a couple of these but if I had to pick one I would choose the Paris prints. I would most definitely buy ‘used’ art if I would find something that I liked. We kept a couple prints the previous owners had in the house so maybe you could consider those hand me downs. The favorite peace we have in the house is probably one I got for my husband last year. It’s from a local linocut artist and I Iove looking at it. Maybe I post a picture one of these coming days.
Elisabeth
Ohhh. I’d love to see a picture!
San
You have some lovely pieces in my home. I am afraid most of the pictures in our home don’t have any special story or meaning… but I’d love to get some more arts on our walls. Jon is not very interested when it comes to decor but also is reluctant for me to just “change” things, so I always have to find a way to do it (because more often than not, he loves it once it’s done ;)).
Elisabeth
It can be SO hard to buy art or really do any decorating in a relationship because, in general, there will be some “conflict” or lack of interest. From what I’ve seen of your apartment (and backyard!!) it looks lovely and well thought-out and just a pleasant place to be. Especially with that new flooring. I thought your kitchen looked so, so welcoming <3
Michelle G.
I love all your second-hand art! I’m a fan of all kinds of art and love museums and art galleries. I haven’t been to either in a while, though. I don’t have any second-hand art in my house, but I’m not opposed to it. If the right piece came along, I’d definitely buy it. I also don’t have any expensive art. I mainly have art made by friends, either that they’ve given to me or that I’ve purchased. I love to buy art from people I follow on Instagram. I love digital download art to pop in a frame and change out whenever I want. I also have a lot of quilt wall hangings, which I consider as art.
Allison
The first and last paintings are my favourite! I don’t think I have any thrifted art, but I have some things painted by artist friends and local artists.
Anne
I am here to assert, again, that your “thrift shops” are more like “Canadian Rooms of Requirement”. I don’t think I have ever seen art at ours! Maybe I am just not looking? they do have some lovely antiques (furniture, some costume jewelry) but no great art that I remember.
I completely agree with whoever wrote that the first painting reminds them of Mary Cassat. But oh, I would take the Paris triptych in a heartbeat. I have one of my own – handmade with love by friends, from postcards – that I treasure. <3
Elisabeth
I LOVE this description. Rooms of Requirement. Haha. This is brilliant and I plan to use this parallel in the future.