Places by rail · Pictures to keep
Trackside Prints Railway journeys, poster history & prints

Railway canvas print

Canvas is the format that stops looking like a print. It stands off the wall, there's no glass to catch a window, and the picture carries on round the edges instead of stopping at a border.

A railway artwork on a canvas stretched two centimetres deep, hung frameless with the picture continuing round the visible side edge
Illustrative format example. Your own photograph supplies the subject.
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What it physically is

The artwork is printed onto canvas and stretched over a wooden frame 2cm deep, then finished so the image wraps the sides rather than stopping at the face. That wrap is why the file we render for a canvas is larger than the panel: a band of your picture goes round the edge and is never seen from the front.

It hangs straight from the box. There is no separate frame to buy and nothing to glaze.

The sizes

30x40, 40x50, 50x70 and 60x80 cm. The two smaller ones suit an alcove or the space above a desk. The two larger ones are wall pieces in the proper sense, seen from across a room, and they ask a lot of the file, so check the size guide before setting your heart on 60x80.

Which photographs suit it

Wide, scenic compositions, because the wrap wants an image that already fills its frame: a viaduct, a coastal run, a full-length line-up, steam standing in cold air. It flatters atmosphere.

What it does not flatter is a picture whose whole point is small print on the side of a locomotive. The weave softens fine detail slightly, and the wrap takes a band off every edge, so a documentary shot is better on framed paper.

The alternatives

With a frame around it, framed canvas in black, dark wood or natural wood. Frameless and hard-wearing, metal. The stage page holds every format side by side.

Next

A railway canvas in a slim black frame, the canvas set inside the moulding

Framed canvas →

A canvas with a frame around it, which sounds like a small difference and isn't. The moulding gives the picture a hard edge and a shadow line, and it is the only format here that offers three frame colours.

Also in on the wall

All 9 in this stage →