The Letter (Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Colgate)

James Wells Champney (American, 1843–1903)

Date: 1881
Medium: oil on canvas
Museum: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, accession 2025.47.3. See the museum’s record
Credit: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Walter and Lucille Rubin

Public domain image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Smithsonian 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: 36 × 48 in, filling the paper (trims 2.9 % 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.

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

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 3.5 %	7¾ × 10 in	8 × 10 in ready-made	12 × 14 in custom	14 × 16 in custom	626 dpi, crisp up close
11 × 14 in	trims 1.7 %	10¾ × 14 in	11 × 14 in ready-made	15 × 18 in custom	17 × 20 in custom	455 dpi, crisp up close
12 × 16 in	trims 2.9 %	12 × 15½ in	12 × 16 in ready-made	16 × 20 in ready-made	18 × 22 in custom	406 dpi, crisp up close
16 × 20 in	trims 3.5 %	15½ × 20 in	16 × 20 in ready-made	20 × 24 in ready-made	22 × 26 in custom	313 dpi, crisp up close
18 × 24 in	trims 2.9 %	18 × 23¼ in	18 × 24 in ready-made	22 × 28 in ready-made	24 × 30 in ready-made	270 dpi, crisp from a step back
30 × 40 in	trims 2.9 %	30 × 38¾ in	30 × 40 in ready-made	34 × 44 in custom	36 × 46 in custom	162 dpi, crisp from a step back
36 × 48 in	trims 2.9 %	36 × 46½ in	36 × 48 in ready-made	40 × 52 in custom	42 × 54 in custom	135 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) 560 × 432 px from Room Paintings
Web image 843 × 651 px from Smithsonian American Art Museum
Print file 2,000 × 1,544 px from Smithsonian American Art Museum
Original file 6,497 × 5,015 px from Smithsonian American Art Museum
The museum’s record of this painting Smithsonian American Art Museum

Public domain image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Smithsonian 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.