I’ve just returned from rotating my display at the Square & Compass, having encountered what I regard as the classic nightmare of anybody hanging pictures. What do you do if a prominent feature in sight of the picture is not level?
I was able to hang one of my favourite images of Almscliff Crag (and I think one of my best) in a prominent position near the door. As I walked around to check the display as a whole I noticed that the picture did not appear to be straight. It didn’t take me long to spot the problem. The picture is hung above a large antique settle, with a high back. This defines a strong horizontal within a short distance of the lower edge of the picture fame. The room has quite a low ceiling, and an equally short distance above the picture is an ancient oak beam, and this is far from exactly horizontal. It doesn’t seem to be possible to hang the picture so that it doesn’t draw attention to its lack of alignment with one or another of these prominent horizontals.
I entertained for a moment the idea of splitting the difference, and ensuring that the angle between each of these lines and the picture frame was equal, but it became immediately obvious that this made the problem worse. In the event I had to opt for its matching the back of the settle. Perhaps the problem would not have occurred with a much smaller picture.
This is a problem that arises whenever one tries to hang pictures in an old building. Our house is more than two hundred years old, and there are no right angles anywhere in it. This morning my wife noticed an inconsistency in the wallpaper in our bedroom, and I had to point out that this was a simple artefact of the oddity of the way in which the walls join at that point. Fortunately this particular defect is not normally visible, as it is usually concealed by a large wardrobe, and can only be seen from a very specific angle.