Shown from about the knees up, a pale, smooth-skinned woman in a fur-lined yellow jacket looks out at us as she sits writing at a table in this vertical painting. The woman’s body faces the table to our left.

A Lady Writing

Johannes Vermeer (Dutch, 1632–1675)

Date: c. 1665
Medium: oil on canvas
Size: 17¾ × 15¾ in (45 × 39.9 cm)
Museum: National Gallery of Art, Washington, accession 1962.10.1. See the museum’s record
Credit: Gift of Harry Waldron Havemeyer and Horace Havemeyer, Jr., in memory of their father, Horace Havemeyer

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

Palette

Closest wall colors:

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Home Office

Hang it

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

Where Print size

Print: 17¾ × 20 in, the whole painting on 20 × 20 in paper
Center: 58 in (147 cm) above the stair line

17¾ × 20 in portrait print (45 × 51 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 9.8 %	8 × 9 in	8 × 10 in ready-made	12 × 14 in custom	14 × 16 in custom	3226 dpi, crisp up close
12 × 12 in	trims 11.3 %	10½ × 12 in	12 × 12 in ready-made	16 × 16 in ready-made	18 × 18 in custom	2435 dpi, crisp up close
11 × 14 in	trims 11.4 %	11 × 12½ in	11 × 14 in ready-made	15 × 18 in custom	17 × 20 in custom	2346 dpi, crisp up close
16 × 16 in	trims 11.3 %	14¼ × 16 in	16 × 16 in ready-made	20 × 20 in ready-made	22 × 22 in custom	1817 dpi, crisp up close
16 × 20 in	trims 9.8 %	16 × 18 in	16 × 20 in ready-made	20 × 24 in ready-made	22 × 26 in custom	1613 dpi, crisp up close
20 × 20 in	trims 11.3 %	17¾ × 20 in	20 × 20 in ready-made	24 × 24 in ready-made	26 × 26 in custom	1458 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) 490 × 560 px from Room Paintings
Web image 738 × 843 px from National Gallery of Art
Print file 1,750 × 2,000 px from National Gallery of Art
Original file 25,813 × 29,494 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.