A company right outside of NYC produces paintings from photographs (they can be a photo of an object, person, place or a photo of a painting - but not a from a digital file).   Here's an example, below: What's interesting is this painting of a photo is on cotten canvas using archival, pigment inks that don't fade (anytime soon). Here's a Digital painting of a New York Subway Station  called "Temple" (I'm not sure if it's from a blurred photo or is a photo of a painting that has been made into a Digital Painting.

In this instance, being illustrative is the right thing - what m-dc does is reproduce a photo as a painting that is suitable to hang as art decoration - but that's all it tries to do and it appears to work well and is a viable option for images you'd want to make into paintings.