A golden yellow melon painted with thick strokes of straw and butter yellow with touches of camel brown sits at the center of a wooden table with a blue top in this almost square still life painting.

The Melon

Édouard Manet (French, 1832–1883)

Date: c. 1880
Medium: oil on canvas
Size: 18½ × 22¼ in (46.7 × 56.5 cm)
Museum: National Gallery of Art, Washington, accession 2014.18.29. See the museum’s record
Credit: Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

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: 16 × 20 in, filling the paper (trims 3.2 % of the picture)
Center: 65¼ in (166 cm) from the floor
Above the headboard: 8 in (20 cm) from the headboard to the frame
Ideal width: 40 to 45 in over a 60 in headboard
Why this height: Centered at eye level, this frame would not sit 6 to 10 in above the headboard, so the 8 in gap sets the height.

16 × 20 in landscape print (41 × 51 cm), centered 65¼ in from the floor, 8 in above the headboard. Drawn to scale on a 12 × 8 ft wall.

Try it on your wall color

Default greige

Print it

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

Paper	Filling the paper	Printed whole	Frame	Frame with a 2 in mat	Frame with a 3 in mat	Sharpness
8 × 10 in	trims 3.2 %	8 × 9¾ in	8 × 10 in ready-made	12 × 14 in custom	14 × 16 in custom	1483 dpi, crisp up close
11 × 14 in	trims 4.9 %	11 × 13¼ in	11 × 14 in ready-made	15 × 18 in custom	17 × 20 in custom	1059 dpi, crisp up close
16 × 20 in	trims 3.2 %	16 × 19½ in	16 × 20 in ready-made	20 × 24 in ready-made	22 × 26 in custom	741 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 × 466 px from Room Paintings
Web image 843 × 701 px from National Gallery of Art
Print file 2,000 × 1,663 px from National Gallery of Art
Original file 14,838 × 12,335 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.