The dining room is the one room in the house built entirely around people sitting still and looking at each other for two hours. It is therefore the room where art earns its keep, because it is the only thing on the wall anyone has time to actually study.
Which argues for pictures that reward a second look and a third. This guide is organised by the kind of dining room you have, and everything in it comes from our dining room collection.
The Formal Dining Room: Still Life
Still life and dining rooms belong together for the obvious reason, and the good ones are far stranger than they first appear.
Vase With Flowers (1706) and Still Life With Flowers And Fruits (1700s) are by Rachel Ruysch, who was the most commercially successful still life painter in the Dutch Republic, worked into her eighties, raised ten children, and was court painter to the Elector Palatine.
Two things to notice at the table. First, the bouquets are impossible: the flowers in them bloom in different months, so they were assembled from studies made across a whole year. Second, there is almost always an insect, a wilting petal or a fallen leaf. That is deliberate. These paintings are about abundance and decay at once, which is a strangely appropriate subject for a room where people eat.
Dahlias (1885) is the looser alternative at the top of this page, for a room that wants flowers without the Dutch solemnity.
Formal rooms also take a portrait well, particularly on the narrow end wall where a landscape would be cramped.
The Moody Dining Room: Candlelight and Night
If your dining room is used mostly after dark, buy for that. Most people choose art at two in the afternoon for a room they only ever sit in at eight at night.
Cafe Terrace at Night (1888) is the obvious choice and a genuinely great one. It is a painting about people eating and drinking outdoors under artificial light, which is exactly what your room is for. Van Gogh painted it on the spot at night, and there is no black anywhere in it: the darkness is built out of deep blue and green, which is why it glows.
Silver Moonlight (1880) and Whitby (1875) are the deep end of the same idea. Grimshaw painted almost nothing but night, and his pictures are calibrated for exactly the light level a dining room has when the chandelier is turned down.
A practical note on candles. Real candlelight is warm and very low in intensity, which flattens colour. Paintings with a strong dark-to-light structure survive that; paintings that depend on subtle colour differences do not. This is why a night scene beats a garden scene in a candlelit room even though the garden looked better in the shop.
The Farmhouse Dining Room: Land and Harvest
For a farmhouse table, long refectory-style, wood, the right subject is the land the food came from.
The Wheat Field (1875) and Delaware Valley (1865) are George Inness, an American landscape painter who deliberately softened and rearranged what he saw. He was not trying to record a location; he wanted the painting to produce a mood, and said so openly at a time when that was an unfashionable position.
A long table also has a specific hanging problem. A single picture centred on a long wall above a long table often looks lost. Two matched pieces spaced along the wall, or one genuinely large horizontal canvas, will hold it much better.
Summer Day Gloucester Massachusetts (1895) is the bright, informal option for a kitchen-dining space that gets morning light.
Conversation Pieces
A dining room is the one place where a painting with something to talk about is genuinely useful. Three that reliably start something:
Afternoon Yellow Room (1910). Frieseke lived next door to Monet at Giverny for years and, unlike almost everyone else there, mostly painted indoors. The whole picture is about sunlight arriving in a room.
Allies Day, May 1917 (1917). Three nations' flags over Fifth Avenue during the First World War, painted from a window. Our Hassam piece tells the rest.
17 (1888) is the one that starts the most conversations, partly because of the title and partly because it is packed with things to find: the lyre put down, the manuscript left open, the scattered roses, the chest at her feet. Strudwick worked slowly and painted late Pre-Raphaelite interiors where nothing is decoration and everything is a detail.
Woman With A Parasol In A Garden (1875) and Hollyhocks (c. 1912) are the softer end, for a room that wants to stay pleasant.
Hanging Above a Table
Hang it lower than you think. Dining rooms are seen from a seated position. Art hung at standing eye level is too high for everyone actually using the room. Aim for the centre of the picture at around fifty-four to fifty-seven inches, slightly below the usual gallery height.
Mind the sideboard. If there is a buffet or sideboard under the picture, treat it like a sofa: six to ten inches of gap, and about two thirds of the furniture width.
Watch the reflections. A dining room usually has a chandelier or pendant directly opposite the main wall. Canvas has a matte surface and handles that far better than glass would, which is one practical advantage of a canvas print in this particular room.
Frames: gold for formal rooms and still life, dark bronze for night scenes and farmhouse wood, silver for anything cool or modern. The Artist's Garden at Giverny (1900) is the exception worth naming: the purples want a warm frame and go dead against silver.
Frequently Asked Questions
What kind of art works best in a dining room?
Something that rewards a long look, because the dining room is the one room where people sit still for hours. Still life is the traditional answer and still the best one. Night scenes are the underrated answer if you mostly eat after dark.
How high should art hang in a dining room?
Lower than elsewhere. The room is experienced sitting down, so centre the picture around fifty-four to fifty-seven inches from the floor. Over a sideboard, keep six to ten inches of gap above the furniture.
How are your prints made?
Each is printed to order on archival canvas from a high resolution scan, stretched over an Appalachian Poplar stretcher bar, and finished in an ornate resin frame in gold, silver or dark bronze. The matte canvas surface is far less reflective than glass, which matters under a chandelier. Nothing is warehoused, so your piece is made after you order it.
