I carry more Alexei Butirskiy than any other painter in the gallery — 319 pieces live on the site right now — because there's no single way to describe what he does. A collector can walk in wanting a small original watercolor sketch or a large one-of-a-kind oil, and both are Butirskiy.

Originals, editions, and what an artist's proof actually is

This room splits into two different kinds of buying. One side is original work on paper and canvas — 60 original oils, 58 original watercolors, 25 mixed media, 12 charcoal and pencil, 6 acrylic, each a single physical piece, framed and signed. The other side is limited-edition giclée, and that's where the artist's proof comes in. An AP is a small run set aside outside the numbered edition — historically the copies an artist or publisher keeps back to check print quality before the full run ships. It's rarer than the numbered edition itself and usually priced above it for exactly that reason: in this collection, a run of 195 typically pairs with an AP of 20, a run of 395 with an AP of 40, a run of 295 with an AP of 30 — roughly a tenth the size, every time.

What moves and what's already gone

Cityscapes are most of what sells here — "Venetian Glow," "Mystic Falls," "Hidden Woods," "After the Storm" among them — and edition sizes on the giclées range from 23 copies up to 395. That's a wide spread for one painter, and it means two prints on the same wall can carry very different scarcity even at a similar price. Inventory tracking covers 293 of this room's 478 variants, and within that tracked set, five titles are down to their last copy — "Gondola D'Amore," "All Snowed In," "Break of Day," "Romantic Encounter," and "Daybreak." Three more have already sold out: both editions of "Memories of Paris" and the artist's proof of "Daybreak."

Scale is worth thinking through separately from all of that. A third of this room, 109 pieces, is tagged small — the framed watercolor sketches mostly fall here, sized for a hallway or a stairwell rather than a single feature wall. Another 54 are tagged large, which is where the bigger oils and the larger giclée editions land. Knowing which group a piece falls into before you order saves a return.

Prices here run $1,075 to $73,000, median $2,575 — the distance between a small original watercolor and a large oil is the whole point of carrying this range. If you're deciding between an original and a numbered giclée, or want to know whether a specific title still has an artist's proof available, call the gallery before you order.

— Steve Schlag, founder, Dolphin Galleries