Jia Lu has been on our About page for years, one of the handful of painters I point to when someone asks who we actually represent. Every piece in this room is a figurative portrait — women, rendered in oil and reproduced as a giclée on canvas — and it reads differently than most of what fills this gallery.

How the edition size tracks the canvas size

All 39 Jia Lu pieces here ship as giclée on canvas, rolled in a tube. Look closely at the edition numbers and a pattern shows up: the bigger the canvas, the smaller the run. "Tang Dynasty" comes in two sizes — a 27 x 42 inch canvas at 268 signed-and-numbered copies plus 25 artist's proofs, and a 40 x 60 inch canvas at only 168 copies plus 15 proofs. "Stillness" does the same thing more sharply: 128 copies at 28 x 42 inches, just 38 at 40 x 60. A larger canvas costs more to print and store, so fewer get made — worth knowing if you're weighing a smaller edition against a bigger piece of wall.

The notation on each listing — "268 s/n plus 25 AP" — breaks down simply enough: s/n means signed and numbered, the artist's own hand on every copy in that run, and AP is the smaller artist's proof set aside outside it. Across this room the numbered runs cluster into three tiers — 268 copies is the most common, 168 sits in the middle, and 88 is the tightest. A piece in the 88 tier is the rarest thing you can buy from this painter at a given size.

Scale runs from a coaster to a doorway

The smallest piece in this room, "Purity Mini," is 8 x 8 inches. The largest canvases run to 40 x 60. That's a real range to hang a decision on — an 8-inch piece works stacked with others or tucked into a hallway, a 40 x 60 needs a wall with nothing else competing for attention.

Right now this room holds 39 Jia Lu pieces, $720 to $3,740, median $1,870, spread across the 88, 168, and 268 edition tiers above. If you're weighing a tighter 88-copy run against the more common 268 tier, or trying to match a size to a specific wall, call the gallery before you order and I'll walk you through what's actually in each tier.

— Steve Schlag, founder, Dolphin Galleries