Rhinoceros Wall Art

Rhinoceros Wall Art

Rhino images belong in rooms with some weight to them — a study, a dining room with dark walls, a hallway with height, a landing you see from below. They are far less at home in a small bedroom or a nursery, whatever the safari-nursery trend suggests, because the animal's whole visual argument is mass, and mass in a small soft room reads as looming rather than impressive.

Texture is the reason to buy one at all. Rhino hide is plated, cracked and dusted with whatever the animal last rolled in, and a good print holds all of that: you can read the grain from a metre away. Images that smooth it into a clean grey shape lose the single most interesting thing about the subject.

Orientation depends on the crop. A full body in a landscape frame gives you the animal in its landscape, horizon and all, and it needs width to breathe. A head-on portrait, horn towards the camera, works tall and works close. It becomes a face rather than a specimen, and faces hold a room better than profiles do.

Monochrome deserves more thought here than with most wildlife. Rhinos are already close to colourless, so black and white loses nothing and gains contrast in the folds and hollows. It also plays more politely with an existing scheme, which matters if the rest of the room is doing the work.

A placement tip: hang it slightly lower than you normally would. Large animal portraits gain a great deal from meeting the eye of a standing adult rather than floating above head height, and a rhino hung too high tips into trophy territory, which is rarely the effect anyone was after.