Two pale-skinned women sit together surrounded by five sheep and a dog in a lush forest in this vertical painting. The woman to our right sits slightly above the other, with her arm draped around the shoulders of her companion.

The Love Letter

François Boucher (French, 1703–1770)

Date: 1750
Medium: oil on canvas
Size: 32 × 29½ in (81.2 × 75.2 cm)
Museum: National Gallery of Art, Washington, accession 1960.6.3. See the museum’s record
Credit: Timken Collection

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

Palette

Closest wall colors:

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Hang it

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

Where Print size

Print: 22¼ × 24 in, the whole painting on 24 × 24 in paper
Center: 58 in (147 cm) above the stair line

22¼ × 24 in portrait print (56 × 61 cm), centered 58 in above the stair line. 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
8 × 10 in	trims 13.6 %	8 × 8½ in	8 × 10 in ready-made	12 × 14 in custom	14 × 16 in custom	982 dpi, crisp up close
12 × 12 in	trims 7.4 %	11 × 12 in	12 × 12 in ready-made	16 × 16 in ready-made	18 × 18 in custom	708 dpi, crisp up close
16 × 16 in	trims 7.4 %	14¾ × 16 in	16 × 16 in ready-made	20 × 20 in ready-made	22 × 22 in custom	531 dpi, crisp up close
16 × 20 in	trims 13.6 %	16 × 17¼ in	16 × 20 in ready-made	20 × 24 in ready-made	22 × 26 in custom	491 dpi, crisp up close
20 × 20 in	trims 7.4 %	18½ × 20 in	20 × 20 in ready-made	24 × 24 in ready-made	26 × 26 in custom	425 dpi, crisp up close
24 × 24 in	trims 7.4 %	22¼ × 24 in	24 × 24 in ready-made	28 × 28 in custom	30 × 30 in custom	354 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) 509 × 560 px from Room Paintings
Web image 766 × 843 px from National Gallery of Art
Print file 1,818 × 2,000 px from National Gallery of Art
Original file 7,863 × 8,652 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.