Wall MuseEight walls from the vaults
The public domain is enormous and mostly unsorted. Tens of thousands of paintings, prints and photographs with the rights waived, scanned beautifully, and filed under accession numbers nobody will ever type into a TV. So we went through the vaults and hung some walls.
A drop is a small exhibition: somewhere between a dozen and three dozen pieces on one theme, chosen by hand, in an order that makes sense on a Frame. Every piece was checked for the things that matter at four thousand pixels, which is mostly that the scan is big enough to look like paint rather than pixels. A drop stays the same after it goes up. It is a wall, not a feed.
There are eight to begin with.
1. Water, stillHarbours at rest, rivers with nowhere to be, a coast the morning after a storm. Painters have always gone to the water to slow down. So can your wall.
2. Golden hourThe last light of the day, kept. Twilight over wilderness, a pink cloud, a fishing village catching the sun on its way out. Hang one and the room warms.
3. Flowers for the wallRoses in a vase, peonies in a basket, a single white flower filling the whole picture. Bouquets that never wilt, from four centuries of people who could not stop painting them.
4. Night piecesNocturnes, moonrises and lantern light. Quiet pictures made for the hours when the rest of the house is asleep and the Frame is the only thing still glowing.
5. Japanese woodblocksSudden showers, whirlpools, the pine groves of Miho and a mountain under a clear sky. The great Edo printmakers, cut and pressed by hand, looking sharper than ever at four thousand pixels.
6. Quiet interiorsSunlight across a floor, a letter being read, a room with the door left open. Pictures of being at home, for the wall of the room you are at home in.
7. Winter lightSnow on bamboo, a skating pond, a forest at sunset with the cold coming on. The season painted by people who loved it, ready for the months when yours arrives.
8. Portraits of nobody famousA young man with a chain, a woman with a dog, an old man who sat very still. Nobody remembers their names, which is the point. They look back at you like family.
How to hang one
In Wall Muse, open the masters and choose a drop. Every piece hangs with one tap, at the Frame's full resolution, with the plaque details kept in your library. On the site, each wall above is a page you can browse and send to someone; the app does the hanging.
What is next
More walls, seasonally. A spring drop is on the easel, and the popular wall, the pieces people bring home most, is already changing by the week. If there is a theme you want hung, write to hello@wallmuse.tv and it might be the ninth.
