Old money larp wallpapers for MacBook, plus 4K

Why paintings, for a larp desktop

Look up larp wallpapers for a Mac and the results lean away from wallets and charts. They lean toward oil paint: gardens above the Mediterranean, a palazzo facing a Venetian square, villas lined up along a grey sea. Call it the old money look, wealth that has been quiet for generations, and it fits the joke well. If larping is playing a role, a desktop styled as a gallery wall plays a life with time and money to spare.

All twelve paintings belong to the public domain. The Cleveland Museum of Art releases photographs of them under Creative Commons Zero, so anyone may use them for any purpose without asking. Below each image you will find the painter, the date and a link to the museum's page for the work.

From canvas to wallpaper

Canvases are seldom 16:10. Wider ones lose a bit on the left and right, taller ones a strip at the top and bottom, always trimmed evenly from the center so the subject stays where the artist set it. No repainting, recoloring or generation took place: the colors are the museum's photograph, converted to sRGB so they look alike on every Mac.

Every painting is saved at 2880 × 1800, the shape and resolution of a Retina MacBook screen. The museum's source files are roughly 3400 pixels wide, so nothing was enlarged. The paintings bear no credit line or mark, and there is no 4K edition of them, because a 3840 pixel file would need stretching.

MacBook size or 4K size

A MacBook display is 16:10, which gives 2880 × 1800 pixels, while a 4K monitor is 16:9, which gives 3840 × 2160. These are different shapes, not merely different scales. A 16:9 image on a 16:10 screen loses its top and bottom edges, and the reverse loses the sides.

If your display runs at a scaled resolution, the picture is still fitted to the panel, so when in doubt grab the larger file.

Our own three looks

Under the paintings are three designs of ours in Flexdger Wallet violet: the mask, a rising chart without numbers, and fanned cards. On a desktop the subject moves to the center, the glow widens, and the left side stays quiet so windows and icons do not clash with the picture.

These three carry a small credit along the bottom edge. A Dock may cover it, which is perfectly fine.

Applying it

Download the JPEG, open System Settings and go to Wallpaper, then drop the file onto the preview or use Add Photo. Pick Fill Screen to keep the proportions.