A densely packed crowd of men and women, all of them with pale skin and most of them wearing black, stand in a theater lobby beneath a mezzanine level that runs close to the top edge of the composition in this horizontal painting.

Masked Ball at the Opera

Édouard Manet (French, 1832–1883)

Date
1873
Medium
oil on canvas
Size
23¼ × 28½ in (59.1 × 72.5 cm)
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, accession 1982.75.1. See the museum’s record
Credit
Gift of Mrs. Horace Havemeyer in memory of her mother-in-law, Louisine W. Havemeyer

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

Palette

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Print
16 × 20 in, filling the paper (trims 1.8 % of the picture)
Center
51¼ in (130 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.
Masked Ball at the Opera: a 16 × 20 in print hung above a sofa, drawn to scale on a 12 × 8 ft wall
16 × 20 in landscape print (41 × 51 cm), centered 51¼ in from the floor, 8 in above the sofa. Drawn to scale on a 12 × 8 ft wall.

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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.