A bearded man with wrinkled, peachy skin and reddened cheeks sits and smokes a pipe on a wooden box in a landscape in this vertical painting. The man’s body faces us, and he peers at us with dark eyes under heavy, bushy white brows.

Mississippi Boatman

George Caleb Bingham (American, 1811–1879)

Date: 1850
Medium: oil on canvas
Size: 24¼ × 17¼ in (61.3 × 43.7 cm)
Museum: National Gallery of Art, Washington, accession 2004.66.1. See the museum’s record
Credit: John Wilmerding Collection

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.

Where Print size

Print: 18 × 24 in, filling the paper (trims 4.9 % of the picture)
Center: 58 in (147 cm) above the stair line

18 × 24 in portrait print (46 × 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

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
5 × 7 in	trims 0.2 %	5 × 7 in	5 × 7 in ready-made	9 × 11 in custom	11 × 13 in custom	961 dpi, crisp up close
12 × 16 in	trims 4.9 %	11½ × 16 in	12 × 16 in ready-made	16 × 20 in ready-made	18 × 22 in custom	404 dpi, crisp up close
18 × 24 in	trims 4.9 %	17 × 24 in	18 × 24 in ready-made	22 × 28 in ready-made	24 × 30 in ready-made	269 dpi, crisp from a step back
30 × 40 in	trims 4.9 %	28½ × 40 in	30 × 40 in ready-made	34 × 44 in custom	36 × 46 in custom	161 dpi, crisp from a step back
36 × 48 in	trims 4.9 %	34¼ × 48 in	36 × 48 in ready-made	40 × 52 in custom	42 × 54 in custom	134 dpi, soft 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) 404 × 560 px from Room Paintings
Web image 608 × 843 px from National Gallery of Art
Print file 1,442 × 2,000 px from National Gallery of Art
Original file 4,853 × 6,729 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.