Written by Paul Worrall
If you’ve searched “Global Art Supplies” hoping to buy something directly from them, I want to save you some time: you can’t, and their own website won’t make that especially obvious. It’s a genuinly common point of confusion, so this is the honest explainer — who they actually are, what they distribute, and where you can actually buy it as an individual artist.
I’ve spent 16 years in the UK art supplies industry and now run Discount Art Supplies, used by over 36,000 UK artists every week — including plenty of people who’ve landed on Global’s site looking for a checkout button that doesn’t exist.
Who Global Art Supplies Actually Are
Global Art Supplies is a genuine, well-established business — a family-owned company based in Wiltshire that’s been importing fine art materials since 1999. Over 25 years they’ve become one of the UK’s leading distributors, supplying more than 700 trade customers from a 22,000 sq ft warehouse. That’s a real, substantial operation, and the confusion isn’t about whether they’re legitimate — they clearly are.
I actually remember a Global Art Supplies rep visiting us at ARTdiscount years ago — turning up with a car boot full of samples and a catalogue thicker than most phone books, talking us through the new season’s Sennelier ranges and a few of the smaller specialist lines most of our customers had never heard of. That’s genuinly how this end of the industry still works, even now — a proper rep relationship between a distributor and the shops that stock their brands, built on catalogue visits and trade shows rather than anything you’d see as a customer. It’s part of why the confusion around their name makes sense; they’ve spent 25 years building relationships with retailers, not with the public, so there’s simply never been a reason for them to build the kind of consumer-facing site that would make this clearer.
What trips people up is the word “supplies” in the name. Global Art Supplies is a wholesale distributor, not a retailer — they sell to art shops and other retail businesses, who then sell those products on to you. There’s no public checkout on their site, no way to place an individual order, and no reason there should be — that’s simply not the business they’re in.
What They Actually Distribute
Global brings a number of genuinly well-regarded fine art brands into the UK market, supplying the retailers who then sell them to artists directly. Their portfolio includes:
Sennelier — the French manufacturer behind some of the finest oil pastels, soft pastels and watercolours available, a brand we’ve covered in detail in our guides to the best oil pastels and the best soft pastels.
Lascaux — a Swiss manufacturer known for innovative, high-quality acrylic paints and mediums, popular among artists who want something beyond the mainstream mass-market brands.
R&F Handmade Paints — an American maker specialising in encaustic (pigmented wax) paint and pigment sticks, a genuinly specialist medium that isn’t widely stocked outside dedicated fine art retailers.
Natural Earth Paint — a brand built around non-toxic, naturally sourced pigments, aimed at artists who want to reduce the environmental and health impact of the materials they use.
Global also sells a range of own-label products under the Global Art Supplies name itself — primed linen and cotton canvases in particular are a genuinly popular line, stocked by a number of independent UK art retailers at competitive prices.
Where You Can Actually Buy These Brands
Since Global doesn’t sell direct, the honest answer is: through any of the UK retailers they supply. Rather than hunting retailer by retailer, our price comparison tool covers exactly this situation — search for the brand you’re after and compare current prices across the UK stockists that carry it, in one place.
🔍 Compare Sennelier Prices → 🔍 Compare Lascaux Prices → 🔍 Compare Global Canvas Prices →
R&F Handmade Paints and Natural Earth Paint are more specialist and less widely stocked in the UK — worth checking directly with a dedicated fine art retailer if a general search doesn’t turn up current stock.
If You’re a Retailer, Not an Artist
If you’ve landed here because you actually run a shop and want to stock Global’s brands, that’s a genuinely different question, and one only Global themselves can answer — they mention being happy to arrange a trade pack or put you in touch with your local sales agent via their own site. That’s not something we can help with directly, since our tools are built for comparing retail prices, not setting up trade accounts.
The Honest Summary
Global Art Supplies is a legitimate, long-established UK distributor — just not one that sells to the public directly. If you’ve searched their name hoping to buy something, the brands to actually search for are Sennelier, Lascaux, R&F Handmade Paints, Natural Earth Paint, or Global’s own canvas range, through any of the UK retailers that stock them. Our price comparison tool is built for exactly that search.
A nice touch for a fine art distributor: the side of their Wiltshire warehouse carries its own piece of artwork, rather than a bare industrial wall.
