Violin Wall Art

Violin Wall Art and Where It Belongs

This subject has a narrower natural habitat than most. A violin sits well in a room where music happens or where somebody stays still for a while — a study, a dining room, a landing outside a practice room, a hallway with deep-coloured walls. It sits badly in a kitchen, and worse in a child's bedroom, where the instrument stops being an object and starts reading as an instruction. If nobody in the house plays, the image has to work purely as shape and colour, which is a higher bar than people expect going in.

Shape is where it usually earns its keep. The scroll, the two f-holes and the double curve of the body are among the most recognisable outlines of any object, and a good image gives you at least one of them clearly. A picture showing the whole instrument small and straight-on wastes all three; a close crop across the f-hole and bridge, or a study of just the scroll, is far stronger on a wall.

Colour is set for you by the varnish — amber, chestnut, deep red-brown — and that is a warm, wood-toned palette. It sits naturally with oak, walnut, leather and dark green or burgundy walls. Against cool grey or stark white it can look orange and rather stranded, so if your room runs cold, look for a monochrome treatment or one where the instrument is lit low against a black ground.

Orientation follows the instrument. A violin is long and slender, so tall formats fit it without argument while wide ones ask you to fill the sides with something else. That makes it useful in the narrow strips of wall that defeat other subjects: beside a doorway, between two windows, up the side of a chimney breast.

One caution about sheet-music backgrounds, which are everywhere in this category. Real notation is legible and specific; the vague printed wallpaper of staves behind many of these images is not, and anybody who reads music will spot it from across the room. If the score matters to you, check that the notes are actually notes.