Crafted by master artists, made just for you.

Bezalel is a small house of oil painters. Choose an original from the wall, or commission a painting made for your own.

The Letter by Ilya Voss

The Letter Ilya Voss, 2025. Oil on linen.

Meet the craftsmen

Each painter keeps to one discipline and one way of seeing. You always know whose hands made your painting.

A painter's palette, brushes and linseed oil on a studio table

The craft

Bezalel is named for the first craftsman in scripture, the one filled with skill "to devise artistic designs". We hold our painters to the old method, and it takes weeks.

  1. Linen, stretched and primed

    Belgian linen is pulled over a wooden stretcher by hand and sealed with layers of ground until it is smooth enough to hold a glaze.

  2. The dead layer

    The whole composition is laid in with a single earth colour. Light and shadow are settled before a single bright colour is mixed.

  3. Fat over lean, for weeks

    Colour goes on in thin layers, each richer in oil than the last, so the painting dries sound and stays bright for generations.

  4. Cured, varnished, signed

    A finished painting rests until the paint has cured, then receives its varnish, the painter's signature and a certificate of authenticity.

How a commission works

  1. Tell us the painting

    Choose a size, a subject and a painter, and add a photograph if you have one. It takes about three minutes.

  2. Your painter replies

    A 30% deposit at checkout reserves your painter. Within two working days they send a small sketch and confirm the final price.

  3. Painted, cured, delivered

    You see progress photographs along the way. The finished painting is crated, insured and delivered in its frame.

Begin a commission

From the people who live with them

It arrived crated like a museum loan. Two years on, I still stop in the hallway to look at it in the evening light.

Helena R., TorontoCommissioned landscape

Ilya sent three sketches before he touched the canvas. My father's hands are exactly right.

Daniel K., VancouverCommissioned portrait

I bought the lemons for the kitchen. Guests always ask who painted it.

Sophie M., MontréalOriginal from the gallery
Commission a painting