52x55 Elite Pau A/P Portrait Linen 1-1/2" Deep #EP-5255

Explore Related Products to this 52x55 Size:

• Acrylic Primed Linen Elite™: Grenoble™
• Oil Primed Linen Elite™: Isola™ • Poitiers™

Pau™ Portrait Smooth Acrylic Primed Artfix Linen

Experience unparalleled artistic precision with this very smooth linen canvas.  It is a sanctuary for artists who delight in precision and fine detailing. It brings portraiture and intricate designs to life with breathtaking clarity. Pau™ embodies luxury. The high thread count helps make it smooth.  Its heavy white ground casts a luminous bright white hue that adds brilliance to your artwork. This canvas combines the best qualities of oil-based primers with the flexibility and resilience of acrylic, offering a unique blend of features. Its absorbent nature makes it ideal for drawing media like oil sticks, pastels, charcoal, and graphite. For artists using delicate mediums such as egg tempera and caseins, mounting this canvas on a rigid surface enhances its capabilities, allowing its super smooth texture to shine, and delivering unparalleled results.

• 100% Belgian Linen 6.1 oz.; Primed Weight 15 oz. per square yard
• Medium Heavy Weight, Fine Weave, Portrait Smooth Texture
• Double Sized and Quadruple Primed with acid-free archival quality acrylic gesso
• Impenetrable ground prevents oil paint from leaching through and harming the canvas
• For acrylics, oils, alkyds, and water miscible oil paints
• Linen has natural oils that prevent disintegration over time.

Titanium Dioxide (TiO₂) Primer Pigment

This primer contains premium-grade Titanium Dioxide (TiO₂) white pigment, renowned for its exceptional performance in acrylic priming. Its standout feature is its enduring whiteness, coupled with remarkable flexibility that persists over time. In contrast to other pigments such as zinc dioxide, Titanium Dioxide maintains its resilience, preventing brittleness as it ages. This quality ensures that artworks retain their integrity and will stand the test of time.

Artfix Pau™ Portrait Smooth Belgian Linen offers a luxurious surface, ideal for highly detailed work. Preferred by portrait artists because it is so smooth for linen. Due to the nature of how flax plants are turned into linen textiles, there may be variations in yarn thickness thereby creating fabric that is individual in nature and has character. There can be infrequent naturally occurring nubs in the linen which may yield small slight bumps where the linen is a little thicker than the rest of the strand. This is normal and part of what gives linen its character.

Elite™ Professional 1.5" Deep B2 Bar • 1/2" Canvas Clearance

A Canvas Clearance of 1/2" is the space between the Bar and the canvas. Generally speaking, more clearance reduces the risk of the canvas touching the wood and creating unsightly lines during painting. Our design provides the optimal clearance so as not to impact your painting, but still leaving enough wood to the maximize strength of the Stretcher Bar.

Finger Jointed Wood is not meant for Stretcher Bars

Solid wood makes the most dependable Stretcher Bar, because one homogeneous wood member is going to behave similarly across the entire length of the Bar. Whereas, with finger-jointed wood is made-up of multiple pieces of wood, sometimes on the actual joint itself, presenting multiple points of failure which no one can control.

We only use Solid Wood to build our Stretcher Bars because a solid piece of wood will last indefinitely. When we speak of archival value, it's not just the paint you use and the quality of your canvas and ground, even the wood choices manufacturers add or reduce value to your final painting. The fact is, you don't want problems, and finger joints only increase that risk of the wood falling apart in the future.

The glue used to bind finger joints is a water based adhesive and when that wood is exposed to high humidity environments, particularly with exterior walls, the glue joints can give-up. As a manufacturer, Masterpiece® does its part to conserve as much wood as possible, and still provide a quality product that will out-perform any other in the marketplace.

52x55 Frame Kit B2 Super Heavy Frame Offers the Ultimate Canvas Support!

• Drawing depicts the exact frame construction, not the proportion
• Precision Machined keyable Super Strong Stretcher Bars (1.5" deep by 2-1/4" wide) allow you to increase the canvas tension
• Each corner has a diagonal oriented Diamond Brace that interlocks with the Stretcher Bars and superior support and rigidity to help keep the frame square
• A Super Strong Keyable Brace and Cross Brace are included for this size that are 3/4" thick x 3.25" wide
• The Bars have a clever utility groove on the inside perimeter of the frame to attach the cross braces and Diamond Braces
• Unique Keyable Cross Braces allow you to tension the canvas in the middle, where it's needed the most
• Cross braces are glued and stapled at the 'cross' for maximum support and rigidity
• Both corner keys and brace keys are pre-installed

Canvas Tension is in Your Control

In dry climates or air conditioned environments, the lack of moisture in the air causes wood frames to shrink and the canvas fibers to narrow and elongate making the canvas more slack and resulting in a loss of canvas tension. In some instances, the canvas could have waves on the surface resulting in an unsightly viewing experience.

Our Elite™ professional frames provide the functionality for you to slightly expand the size of the frame in the corners and the middle of the canvas, thereby increasing canvas tension all across the surface. The difference between a loose canvas and a tight canvas is just 1/8" of an inch, so a small adjustment using our corner and brace keys makes an important difference in canvas tension.

• Helps to prevent waves that occur in a loose canvas
• Increase canvas tension by tapping-in the corner and brace keys
• True professional class canvases make it possible for you to adjust the canvas tension

Cross Braces Make it Tighter

A tightly stretched canvas on an un-braced frame overpowers the Stretcher Bars causing them to bow inward and thereby lose tension. Sometimes that bow can expose a space in picture frames.

When we stretch a canvas on a properly supported frame, the cross-braces prevent the Bars from bowing thereby achieving maximum canvas tension. To increase the canvas tension even more, simply tap the corner and brace keys further in their slots. Properly supported frames provide you with the control over the canvas tension of your canvas and painting.

Selective Harvesting in our Sustainable Forests

Intelligent selective harvesting of timber is an ecological method to replace the natural occurrences of forest fires and disease and landslides that can devastate forests. This is all part of the process of sustainable forest management to which we subscribe when we choose which lumber we use in our products.

Specially Dried and Heat Treated Lumber

We source our wood from a select group of top-tier environmentally conscious lumber mills in the Pacific Northwest. These mills specially dry and heat-treat the lumber to our specifications, resulting in about half the moisture content compared to wood from typical home improvement centers or lumber yards. This process makes the wood stronger, reducing the likelihood of cracking, splitting, or warping. While the wood we use comes at a higher cost, it ensures a more dimensionally stable end product. This stability is crucial for crafting fine professional canvases that support your invaluable art over time.

MuseumWrap™ Stretching Technique

With more than a half a century of American engineering, Masterpiece® designs and builds its own proprietary stretching equipment that enables us to produce the finest and most tightly-stretched canvas on the market.

• Drum-tight stretch!
• Up to 50% tighter than other methods
• Balanced tension across the surface
• Uncut folded corners make it possible to remove and re-stretch canvas on the same size frame
• Usually the corner folds are on the long sides

Our mission at Masterpiece® is to deliver the premium quality products that add value to your art. We are widely recognized as the nation's leader and trendsetter of professional quality fine-art canvas. Not only do we have the widest selection of products, but we feature intriguing aspect ratios and sizes with a purpose to add new dimensions to your art.

Every work of art is the child of its age and, in many cases, the mother of our emotions. ♦ Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky, a pioneer in the world of abstract art, had an intrinsic understanding of the relationship between art, time, and emotion. Art, like any form of expression, is deeply rooted in the era in which it is created. It captures the zeitgeist, the moods, beliefs, and aspirations of its time, offering future generations a window into the past.

But more than being a mere reflection, art also molds and shapes our feelings. When we interact with a piece, it speaks to us, eliciting a wide range of emotions, from joy to melancholy, from awe to confusion. In this dynamic interplay, we aren't just passive observers; we engage with the piece, allowing it to inform, challenge, and transform our perceptions. Through art, we discover new facets of ourselves and the world around us.

Kandinsky's insight reminds us that while art might be a product of its era, its influence is timeless. Every brushstroke, every note, every movement speaks to the human experience. And in this shared connection, artists and their audience find a bond that transcends the confines of time.

---

With a nod to Wassily Kandinsky, we present these words of wisdom and our own custom crafted portrait. Let this fusion stoke your creative fires. Dive into your art!