A print on a wall is never seen alone. It is read against the sideboard below it, the door beside it, the height of the person standing in front of it. That is why size is the first thing we decide at Museartis, and why we do not decide it by taste. A poster shop picks the size that fills a frame. We take it from the work.
The rule
Every work comes in two sizes. If it fits a standard sheet with a white border, the first size prints it at its original size, 1:1, and the second is the next sheet up, with the enlargement stated. John Constable's Cloud Study of 1821 is an oil sketch on paper, small enough to hold: it comes at 1:1 on a 50 × 40 cm sheet, and at 1.19× on 70 × 50 cm.
If the work is larger than any sheet we print, it is reduced, and the reduction is stated just as plainly. Édouard Manet's View of the 1867 Exposition Universelle is a canvas of 196 × 108 cm. It comes at 0.30× on a 70 × 50 cm sheet and at 0.43× on 100 × 70 cm. No size is chosen because it happens to suit a frame.
How we measure
A factor like 0.43× is only as good as the measurement behind it. Each sheet goes through the same four steps, and the Manet shows them best.
1. Find the edge. The Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo photographed the canvas unframed, on a dark ground, so the file shows the tacking margins and a frayed edge where Manet stopped painting. We measure the edge at seven points along each long side and five along each short side, and cut at the outer edge of the canvas. On an unfinished picture the edge of the paint is soft, and cutting there would draw a line Manet never drew.
2. Anchor the catalogue. The museum gives the width as 196 cm. Dividing the measured pixels by that figure gives 715.9 pixels per centimetre across the picture and 712.7 down it, 0.45 % apart. The proportions agree with the catalogue to within half a percent, so nothing is squeezed or stretched.
3. Place it on the sheet. The picture is then scaled onto a standard sheet by one fixed factor. On the 100 × 70 cm sheet it measures 84.0 × 46.1 cm; the white border is equal at the sides and slightly deeper at the foot than at the head, so the picture sits at the optical centre rather than the geometric one.
4. State it. The factor is printed on the size button itself. The product page gives the size of the original and of the image on the sheet, and the sheet record behind every print sets out the measurements, the factor and the resolution at that size, so anyone can check the arithmetic.
When file and catalogue disagree
Sometimes the measured proportions do not match the published dimensions. We say so on the sheet record rather than quietly pick one, because a stated scale is a claim, and a claim has to be checkable. The same discipline decides how large a print can go at all; that part of the story is told in Why This Print Is Not Bigger.
The result is a print you can hold up against the room and know what you are looking at: the work itself, or the work at a stated fraction of itself. Never an arbitrary size.
The prints in this note: Édouard Manet – View of the 1867 Exposition Universelle | Giclée Print · John Constable – Cloud Study, 1821 | Giclée Print
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