Names used for the rooms in middle- and upper-class homes have changed over the years, and are horribly inconsistent. Bedroom, kitchen and dining rooms are relatively straightforward, but when you come to those collectively termed reception rooms it’s hard to know which is a living, sitting or drawing room, or parlour for that matter.

For those with more than one reception room, there’s some consensus that the drawing room is the smartest in the house. Its name originates not from art, but is an abbreviation for withdrawing room, as one of its widespread purposes was for the ladies to withdraw to after dinner, leaving the men drinking brandy or port and smoking cigars in the dining room before rejoining the ladies.

The first of Augustus Egg’s narrative series Past and Present from 1858 shows an ordinary middle-class drawing room, in which there are mother, father, and two young daughters, each well-dressed. Most striking is the mother, who is stretched out across the green carpet, prone. Her arms are stretched beyond her head, which is buried face down between her upper arms, and the hands are clasped together in tension.

Father is sat at a substantial circular table, facing the viewer. He is staring, brow furrowed, looking extremely tense and worried. His left hand holds a small note; his right hand is clenched, and rests on the table. His left shoe presses a miniature painting into the carpet.

The daughters are playing together at the left, opposite their father. One kneeling, the other sat, on the carpet, they’re building a house of cards that is just about to fall. One stares, her mouth slightly open in anxious surprise, looking towards where her mother might have been standing before she fell to the floor. The other girl is still looking intently at the house of cards.

The room is full of cues, clues, and symbols to its narrative. Among the more visible are: the collapsing house of cards; an apple has been cut in two, one half left on the table, the other on the carpet by the mother; the reflection of an open door indicating the imminent departure of the mother. Egg also uses Hogarth’s technique of paintings within the painting. On the wall at the left is the expulsion of Adam and Eve titled The Fall, below which is a miniature portrait of the mother; at the right is a shipwreck by Clarkson Stanfield titled Abandoned, and below a portrait of the father.

When Harriet Backer was back in Paris, she continued to explore the play of light in interiors, with Chez Moi from 1887 as an example. The piano keys, dress, plant, window blind and reflections on the pictures hanging on the wall are each shown with precision. An open violin case on the chair suggests the pianist is accompanying another musician.

Anna Alma-Tadema was a precocious and brilliant painter in watercolours, and her earliest surviving works, made when she was only seventeen or eighteen, document the interior of the family home near Regent’s Park, London. Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s Library in Townshend House, London (1884) is a meticulously-detailed account of that room, even down to its stained glass. The strange brass case on the floor in front of the couch is a coal scuttle for the fire to the left.

Her small watercolour of The Drawing Room, Townshend House (1885), painted the following year, shows her improved skills at depicting surface light and texture. Suspended above its ornate decor is an elaborate bird cage.

Although Félix Vallotton was still under Nabi influence when he painted The Red Room in 1898 using distemper, his motif is novel in being one of his early domestic interiors. A man and woman stand in a loose embrace in the doorway of a living or drawing room with brick red decor. Above the fireplace is what could be a mirror, or a painting, in which a person dressed in black is standing in the distance, apparently looking away from the couple.

Harold Gilman, a member of the Camden Town Group, painted domestic interiors, including this early Edwardian Interior from about 1907. This shows the drawing room of his family home in the Rectory at Snargate, with the artist’s youngest sister as model. The surface of a chest of drawers is covered with ceramic vases, bowls, and a painted buddha.

Another member of the group, Fox Pitt painted this Interior with Maid in about 1913, where his choice of paintings is of particular significance. Above the fireplace is Harold Gilman’s Norwegian Street Scene (Kirkegaten, Flekkerfjord) (1913), and above the bright cushion is Charles Ginner’s The Wet Street, Dieppe (1911). It’s thought that the sofa throw came from the Omega Workshops, established by Roger Fry, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell. Together these make it a truly avant garde interior of the time.

Markets rose to become an important feature of many towns during the Middle Ages. Initially they provided the opportunity for farmers with excess to trade that for other produce or money, and for trades like bakers to ensure their supply of flour. By 1600, many across Europe were strictly regulated to prevent the involvement of intermediary traders, speculation and hoarding. In some, bells were rung to mark the start and end of trading, and doing deals outside that period was punishable by substantial fines. Both parties involved, producers and consumers, were keen to deal directly.

As some farms increased production to generate regular income from sales at market, samples of grain were brought for the buyer to inspect, and in larger towns and cities markets came to specialise in classes of produce, such as grain, fruit and vegetables, or meat. By the start of the nineteenth century, local laws and rules were relaxed to allow middlemen, dealers, who quickly became merchants, and often richer than either producer or consumer.

Smaller markets in towns remained more traditional, but most produce was then traded by increasingly affluent merchants in cities. In some European countries, the businesses of some merchants grew to enormous size, controlling commodity markets during the twentieth century.

Constant Troyon’s magnificent On the Way to Market from 1859 shows a couple driving their few cattle and a flock of sheep, with wicker panniers being used to transport young lambs. Judging by the trees, this is set in the autumn, when their livestock were in peak condition.

Petrus van Schendel’s Market by Candlelight from 1865 shows a town market in the late afternoon when the nights had drawn in. This young woman is selling small quantities of fruit and vegetables, probably from the family farm.

Smaller local markets were also dominated by seasonal produce. Léon Lhermitte brought this scene of an Apple Market, Landerneau, Brittany (c 1878) to life with his detailed realism. With a cart on the move in the background, and sellers ready with their scales, it shows the small-scale bustle of an otherwise quiet country town. Precious few men are in sight as these farmers’ wives sell small quantities of their fruit to locals.

Lhermitte’s later pastel of the Vegetable Market in St-Malo (1893) shows a wider range of farm produce, again largely being traded between women. Arcades like this were common alongside indoor markets selling anything from fish to crockery.

By this time, large cities such as Paris had famous markets.

This painting by Léon Lhermitte of Les Halles in 1895 shows the central market in Paris, described so well by Émile Zola in his novel Le Ventre de Paris (The Belly of Paris, 1873). This market is thought to have been founded in the eleventh century, and moved indoors into its halls in 1183. It grew steadily in size and importance as the main food market for Paris, and was housed in glass and iron in the 1850s. Most of its markets moved away in 1969, and the remains were demolished during the 1970s.

Larger markets gained their own indoor areas where regular traders could establish permanent stalls.

Harold Gilman’s oil painting of Leeds Market, from about 1913, shows an everyday view of one of England’s northern cities. This building had only been constructed in 1901-04, and housed the fruit and vegetable stalls next to a grand central hall. This was a far cry from markets of just a few decades earlier, let alone those of the seventeenth century.