The top three-quarters of this horizontal landscape painting is filled with roiling, deeply shadowed clouds that tower over a line of buffalo crossing a grassy meadow below.

Buffalo Trail: The Impending Storm

Albert Bierstadt (American, 1830–1902)

Date: 1869
Medium: oil on canvas
Size: 29½ × 49½ in (74.9 × 125.7 cm)
Museum: National Gallery of Art, Washington, accession 2014.79.3. See the museum’s record
Credit: Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, through the gift of Mr. and Mrs. Lansdell K. Christie, 1960)

Public domain image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art (Open Access, CC0).

Palette

Closest wall colors:

Fits these rooms

Hang it

Pick the furniture and a print size to see it to scale on your wall.

Where Print size

Print: 23¾ × 40 in, the whole painting on 30 × 40 in paper
Center: 55¼ in (140 cm) from the floor
Above the sofa: 8 in (20 cm) from the sofa to the frame
Ideal width: 56 to 63 in over an 84 in sofa
Why this height: Centered at eye level, this frame would not sit 6 to 10 in above the sofa, so the 8 in gap sets the height.

23¾ × 40 in landscape print (60 × 102 cm), centered 55¼ in from the floor, 8 in above the sofa. Drawn to scale on a 12 × 8 ft wall.

Try it on your wall color

Default greige

Print it

No standard paper matches this painting’s proportions closely, so print it whole with a white border, or trim the edges to fill the paper.

Paper	Filling the paper	Printed whole	Frame	Frame with a 2 in mat	Frame with a 3 in mat	Sharpness
5 × 7 in	trims 16.6 %	4¼ × 7 in	5 × 7 in ready-made	9 × 11 in custom	11 × 13 in custom	3148 dpi, crisp up close
12 × 16 in	trims 20.5 %	9½ × 16 in	12 × 16 in ready-made	16 × 20 in ready-made	18 × 22 in custom	1386 dpi, crisp up close
18 × 24 in	trims 20.5 %	14¼ × 24 in	18 × 24 in ready-made	22 × 28 in ready-made	24 × 30 in ready-made	924 dpi, crisp up close
20 × 30 in	trims 10.6 %	18 × 30 in	20 × 30 in ready-made	24 × 34 in custom	26 × 36 in custom	738 dpi, crisp up close
24 × 36 in	trims 10.6 %	21½ × 36 in	24 × 36 in ready-made	28 × 40 in custom	30 × 42 in custom	614 dpi, crisp up close
30 × 40 in	trims 20.5 %	23¾ × 40 in	30 × 40 in ready-made	34 × 44 in custom	36 × 46 in custom	554 dpi, crisp up close

Sharpness is worked out from the largest file the museum offers. Above 300 dpi a print holds up at arm’s length; 150 dpi is plenty for a picture seen from across a sofa.

Download

Free for any use, including commercial: this image is public domain (CC0).

Thumbnail (WebP) 560 × 333 px from Room Paintings
Web image 843 × 502 px from National Gallery of Art
Print file 2,000 × 1,192 px from National Gallery of Art
Original file 22,191 × 13,222 px from National Gallery of Art
The museum’s record of this painting National Gallery of Art

Public domain image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art (Open Access, CC0). You may print, share, change and sell it without asking. Read what that means on our image license page, and how to get a good result in how to print a public-domain painting.