Arrangement of pictures on walls
NOprophet_NØprofit
Shipmate
in Heaven
How are your's arranged? We arguing gently about groupings of small, larger ones as focal points, not having photos mixed with paintings. Our collection of things is "too many". We've all taken lessons and thus have paintings by the two of us, by our children, and some professionals: examples. Plus photos.
What is your arrangement of pictures? I am going to lose the arguments or course.
What is your arrangement of pictures? I am going to lose the arguments or course.
Comments
We have a big collection of family pictures in the living room on both walls, arranged in groupings with a similar amount of white space between all the elements. So, something like this: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/b2/aa/b7/b2aab71d55241cbbe9c2305b02362eb7.jpg
We don't really care about frames being all the same, or any such thing. But I don't want a single straight line all the way across either the top or the bottom--the very formal rigid nature of that would tend to stress me out. Not to mention the difficulty involved in obtaining the effect, with nothing out of line.
At my wife's insistence, ours are done the other way round. It's the bottom edges that are all neatly aligned.
The easiest way to see your grouping without having to go to the trouble of putting nails in the wall is to lay it out on the floor first.
Look at the space you're working within. The visual lines that create the boundaries of the eyeline - they're not always the most logical. Like the edge of the curtain, not the edge of the window behind it, delineates the boundary of the space.
Group odd numbers together. Avoid even numbers and "tombstoning" - that marching effect that goes with straight lines unless you're working with obvious diptychs and triptychs.
It's OK to group photos and paintings - whatever you think works best according to theme shape and or color, there are no rules about that. Try to think about how the eye flows around the room and transition the pieces and grouping to create a kind of visual narrative.
I love arranging artwork on walls it's so much fun to pull someone's collection together into a cohesive narrative.
AFF
Larger ones of similar size were all hung equidistant from the ceiling. Smaller ones were hung in groups that would more or less take up the same space that a single larger one would take.
Got tired of cleaning them all, so now only my favorites remain. No more than one or two on each wall in each room.
I am a stickler for absolutely straight pictures. I use a carpenter's level to check them. If I see a picture that seems even a millimeter off -- even in public places -- I have an irresistible urge to straighten them.
One of my favourites is in the style of this Hurley and we have a Franz Kienmeyer and a Hicks much like this one, and a Grandmaison pastel of my mother as a young child (he was from Ottawa, my mother said he did pictures of most of her Rockcliffe friends too).
I like @A Feminine Force's plan. I will see if we can agree to try this.
On the wall opposite there are 4 pictures. The 2 Japanese prints are side by side, but offset. The top of the large painting on the end aligns with the top of higher print. The smaller painting in the middle hovers between that line and the top of the lower print, so there is a stepped arrangement.
Besides the spacing there is the harmony or contrast of the subject. So the prints are obviously a pair, featuring figures. The paintings are different media, frames and mounts, but both landscapes - Botanic Gardens and rural Perthshire - very different but containing visual 'matches' nevertheless.
We also don't have any photos up but do have paintings by friends and relatives; a large one on the chimney breast in the lounge and on the only spare wall in the kitchen, with a couple of smaller ones dotted around the lounge and hall. The hallway also have 3 antique samplers (one Georgian) arrange in a line. We have a couple of old maps that are awaiting framing to hang in the lounge.
We have been known to occasionally borrow oil paintings from a relative, to see what works in a newly decorated room
In the living room, we have a framed aerial photo of the Lands End peninsula. We also have two Bob Saunders limited edition prints - one was my 21st birthday present from my parents, the other was my 23rd birthday present.
In the front room, which is now our bedroom, we have a framed satellite photo of the whole of Cornwall.
We also have lots of photos and special cards on the bookshelves.
In our previous house, we had a knock through, and the living room part had hessian wall weave on one wall. Our cat at the time thought this was wonderful, and climbed it and used it as a huge scratch post.
We therefore had a lot of small framed pictures in quite an artistic arrangement, mainly to cover the scratched areas!
No family pictures on the walls, but agree about not lining paintings up in a single straight line. And in putting paintings where they fit, we're talking simply of fit physically, not thematically or any other arrangement. So one wall of the dining room has a decent sized mirror, with a smaller picture next to it because it fits into that space.
My oldest son spent a few days in lockdown 1 covering his bedroom wall with pictures of cars from a magazine, all taped on. Good thing we hadn't got round to repainting his room yet!
Like you, we have too many pictures (or perhaps not enough walls).
We have:
A couple of big pictures, where the picture takes up a significant part of the wall, and is on the wall by itself.
Some pictures side-by-side at the same height (only works if the pictures and frames match).
Some in a cluster.
Some vertically one above the other, when they're in a narrow vertical space (eg. the space between windows).
Plus a few photos in frames hanging around on shelves etc.
I think if the photos and paintings were all portraits, I'd be happy to cluster them. I don't think I'd group a portrait with a landscape photo, though, or with something abstract.
I prefer the bottom edge to be aligned, but I'm not bothered about pictures being a little off square. Is being bothered about alignment by height but not square unusual?
One is the unfortunate case of having an insufficient number of books. This is theoretically possible, but I don't think I've encountered it in person.
The second is rather more accurately described as "not enough walls" - to which I'd reply that an entire wall lined with fitted bookshelves has a significant book-storing capacity, and can also be treated as a wall for many purposes.
Unfortunately for the present discussion, none of those purposes is hanging pictures. Whilst you can certainly stand photo frames on bookshelves (if you've got extra space, or deep shelves where the photos stand in front of some books), it looks very odd indeed to hang pictures from bookshelves.
Both insufficient space for bookshelves and insufficient space for pictures are commonly encountered when moving to a smaller home (as our shipmate @NOprophet_NØprofit reports having recently done).
We could also talk pianos. Quite like this one. Signed in pencil by the maker of the soundboard, dated 10 May 1911. Original ivory keys and ebony sharps. Not as exact as a Yamaha, but it has a richness and colour of tone that I can hear in an instant when it is played. And not plastic keys which are not the thing for my sweaty hands.
Additional notes:
-Do not have new flooring put in without first measuring the piano.
-There is a contrivance called a "piano tilter" which can get the piano to the stairway angle. If they use it, k-ching, extra charge.
-Piano movers know geo-trig and all the angles they must navigate.
-I had no idea the value of it today. It scared me. Lots.
[/tangent]
One interesting dynamic is how high art is placed. It really makes a difference with, say, statuary and sculptures in museums and in churches. In a museum, for example, Buddha is placed where you're looking (slightly down) at him; in a temple, he'd be up higher and looking (down) at you. Some of that dynamic spills over into framed artwork, I think, but it's not quite the same. A framed piece hung high up does feel a little more distant, but you can see the whole thing, whereas a statue or sculpture set up high means you can't quite see it all, at least not from the angles you want to see it from. I used to work at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, and they have a large, very stylized statue of St. Francis (by Beniamino Bufano - seen here). He looks like he's looking down at the floor a bit, as if he's shy. When I was in St. Mary's Square in Chinatown, I saw a sculpture of Sun Yat Sen by the same artist, and he was on a pedestal. His gaze was similar to that of St. Francis, but it actually met the viewer's gaze thanks to the pedestal. I think several other statues of his are on higher pedestals like that, too. (I used to call that statue at GC "Creepy St Francis.")
Well, I've wandered quite a ways from hanging pictures (all the way to San Francisco, in fact!) but my point is supposed to be that another consideration is how you feel the image in the frame relates to the viewer, to the body, and how people may interact with it (and whether you want them to).
Ouch! That's no way to treat a Steinway.
Thank you, Irving Berlin!
When it was moved to his house, he had a piano tuner in who reckoned that pianos have a limited life because of the way they are constructed. (/piano tangent)
https://photos.app.goo.gl/dtibfaDvMxvvihp99
eg one of my galleries of horse pix..
https://www.flickr.com/photos/hills_alive/galleries/72157645890127400/
As a general rule, I'd put family photographs on shelves or tables rather than on the wall, and leave the walls for paintings and prints.
That is every house in downtown/central St. John's, including ours! My dad, who grew up on Prince of Wales St in the 1940s, says they used to roll cans down the kitchen floor to see which would get to the wall first.
This reminds me of a piece of good advice that I was given quite some time ago.
Keep a record of who the people in photos are. If you're an elderly relative (and so know who all the people are), write it down. If you're a younger relative, pester your elderly relatives to identify the people in the photos. Otherwise all the people who remember die, and what you're left with is a "this might be my great grandfather, or maybe his brother, or maybe his uncle."