We hover low over a body of choppy water in front of several rowboats filled to capacity with light-skinned men jostling and fighting each other amid larger wooden ships in this horizontal painting of a naval battle.

The Battle of La Hogue

Benjamin West (American, 1738–1820)

Date
1778
Medium
oil on canvas
Size
60 × 84¼ in (152.7 × 214 cm)
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, accession 1959.8.1. See the museum’s record
Credit
Andrew W. Mellon Fund

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

Palette

Closest wall colors:

Hang it

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

Print
36 × 48 in, filling the paper (trims 4.8 % of the picture)
Center
61¼ in (156 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.
The Battle of La Hogue: a 36 × 48 in print hung above a sofa, drawn to scale on a 12 × 8 ft wall
36 × 48 in landscape print (91 × 122 cm), centered 61¼ 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

Standard paper sizes that keep this painting’s proportions, the frames that fit them, and how sharp each one prints.

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).

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.