Room Paintings Famous paintings, matched to your room.
Honey-gold sunlight from low along the horizon to our left falls across the copper and bronze-colored canopies of trees that frame our view of a stone church with stained glass windows and ornate spires in this horizontal landscape…

The Return

Thomas Cole (American, 1801–1848)

Date
1837
Medium
oil on canvas
Size
39½ × 63½ in (100.3 × 161.4 cm)
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, accession 2014.79.12. See the museum’s record
Credit
Corcoran Collection (Gift of William Wilson Corcoran, 1869)

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.

Print
25 × 40 in, the whole painting on 30 × 40 in paper
Center
55¾ in (141 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.
The Return: a 25 × 40 in print hung above a sofa, drawn to scale on a 12 × 8 ft wall
25 × 40 in landscape print (63 × 102 cm), centered 55¾ 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

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
5 × 7 in trims 13 % 4½ × 7 in 5 × 7 in ready-made 9 × 11 in custom 11 × 13 in custom 3565 dpi, crisp up close
12 × 16 in trims 17.1 % 10 × 16 in 12 × 16 in ready-made 16 × 20 in ready-made 18 × 22 in custom 1584 dpi, crisp up close
18 × 24 in trims 17.1 % 15 × 24 in 18 × 24 in ready-made 22 × 28 in ready-made 24 × 30 in ready-made 1052 dpi, crisp up close
20 × 30 in trims 6.8 % 18½ × 30 in 20 × 30 in ready-made 24 × 34 in custom 26 × 36 in custom 843 dpi, crisp up close
24 × 36 in trims 6.8 % 22½ × 36 in 24 × 36 in ready-made 28 × 40 in custom 30 × 42 in custom 700 dpi, crisp up close
30 × 40 in trims 17.1 % 25 × 40 in 30 × 40 in ready-made 34 × 44 in custom 36 × 46 in custom 630 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).

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.

More like this

By Thomas Cole, or in the same style or subject.

All works by Thomas Cole