We look onto the side of a rowboat crowded with nine men trying to save a pale, nude young man who flails in the water in front of us as a shark approaches, mouth agape, from our right in this horizontal painting.

Watson and the Shark

John Singleton Copley (American, 1738–1815)

Date: 1778
Medium: oil on canvas
Size: 71¾ × 90½ in (182.1 × 229.7 cm)
Museum: National Gallery of Art, Washington, accession 1963.6.1. See the museum’s record
Credit: Ferdinand Lammot Belin Fund

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

Palette

Closest wall colors:

Fits these rooms

Living Room

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 5.4 % 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 0.9 %	8 × 10 in	8 × 10 in ready-made	12 × 14 in custom	14 × 16 in custom	3183 dpi, crisp up close
11 × 14 in	trims 0.9 %	11 × 14 in	11 × 14 in ready-made	15 × 18 in custom	17 × 20 in custom	2294 dpi, crisp up close
12 × 16 in	trims 5.4 %	12 × 15 in	12 × 16 in ready-made	16 × 20 in ready-made	18 × 22 in custom	2007 dpi, crisp up close
16 × 20 in	trims 0.9 %	16 × 20 in	16 × 20 in ready-made	20 × 24 in ready-made	22 × 26 in custom	1591 dpi, crisp up close
18 × 24 in	trims 5.4 %	18 × 22¾ in	18 × 24 in ready-made	22 × 28 in ready-made	24 × 30 in ready-made	1338 dpi, crisp up close
30 × 40 in	trims 5.4 %	30 × 37¾ in	30 × 40 in ready-made	34 × 44 in custom	36 × 46 in custom	803 dpi, crisp up close
36 × 48 in	trims 5.4 %	36 × 45½ in	36 × 48 in ready-made	40 × 52 in custom	42 × 54 in custom	669 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 × 444 px from Room Paintings
Web image 843 × 668 px from National Gallery of Art
Print file 2,000 × 1,586 px from National Gallery of Art
Original file 32,121 × 25,469 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.