Growing plants indoors is an ancient tradition, but it wasn’t until the nineteenth century that it became popular among the middle classes. While some were grown for their flowers, foliage plants became common, and in the later part of the century Aspidistra elatior became so widespread in Britain that it was a symbol of dull middle-class respectability and the bourgeoisie.

The potted houseplants straggling up for light from the window in John Roddam Spencer Stanhope’s Thoughts of the Past (1859) are anything but respectable, though. Here they form part of the stereotype of one of London’s many prostitutes.

In 1887, the young Swedish artist Carl Larsson painted The Toy Corner inside his family home. His wife Karin was a talented artist who concentrated on interior design, and was responsible for most of the interiors shown in her husband’s paintings. At the left is a collection of plants in red earthenware pots.

At about the same time, Paul Signac pictured the bourgeoisie at table in La salle à manger, variously known as Breakfast or The Dining Room from 1886-87, perhaps his first major Neo-Impressionist painting. The man seen in profile with his cigar is Signac’s grandfather Jules, and the woman drinking coffee may be Signac’s mother. This is thoroughly middle class, with its uniformed maid, a spotless tablecloth, plush curtains and a potted plant in the window.

Sunday, which Signac started in October 1888 and completed in March 1890, is perhaps the best-known of his interiors, and continues their theme of the humdrum life of the bourgeoisie. Its static, stultified composition and atmosphere are intentional, and pervade its every detail down to the potted palms at the left.

Harriet Backer’s Woman Sewing (1890) shows a woman (a wife in the Norwegian title) sat at her sewing. This appears to have been a quick oil sketch, with its gestural depictions of potted plants, table, and chair.

The potted plants in Anna Ancher’s Fisherman’s Wife Sewing (1890) are in flower, and shown in their shadows cast on the wall by the sunlight pouring through a window to the left.

In 1895, Christian Krohg painted one of his more enigmatic works, a throwback to his social narratives, and something of a ‘problem painting’: Eyewitnesses. It is nighttime in a living room. Two fishermen stand in front of a door. Still wearing their soaked and soiled oilskins, they appear to have entered the room straight after coming ashore from the sea. One stares in shock towards the viewer, the other looks down and away. Both appear full of unease, silent and immobile.

At the right, a young woman is standing, leaning forward towards the men, as if listening to them. She looks anxious, with her hands clasped in front of her chest. Behind her an oil lamp burns brightly, there are the leaves of a large potted plant, and a couple of paintings on the wall behind a large blue settee.

In another world three years later, the Danish painter Laurits Andersen Ring’s wife Sigrid sits reading the ‘leftist’ daily newspaper Politiken At Breakfast in 1898. The furniture is modern, designed rather than thrown together, and colour-coordinated. By the window on the right is a small stack of potted plants enjoying the light.

Thorvald Boecks bibliotek (Thorvald Boeck’s Library) (1902) is one of Harriet Backer’s few interiors that is devoid of people, here replaced by books from floor to ceiling. Alongside the intricate detail of their many spines, furniture, and other decorations is a high potted plant at the left.

The windowsills in Nikolai Astrup’s Interior Still Life: Living Room at Sandalstrand are full of plants enjoying the sheltered climate indoors.

Further north still, homes in Iceland’s capital Reykjavik had room for ample foliage, as shown in Þórarinn Þorláksson’s view of The Artist’s Home in 1924.

The aspidistra is still flying in domestic interiors today.

Although few of those who migrated to the towns and cities from the countryside prospered as a result, there were sufficient examples to lure others to take their chances. For a young woman, success could come through the growing world of fashion.

The foot of the ladder was the greatest challenge: how to make the break from the worn-out worker shown in Christian Krohg’s Tired from 1885. This young seamstress was one of the many thousands who worked at home at that time, toiling for long hours by lamplight for a pittance. A few of them had the good fortune to be discovered and taken up into a small dressmaker’s.

They might then enter the world of Moritz Stifter’s New Dress from 1889. Every face is smiling here, some perhaps a little vacuously, as an affluent young woman tries on a new dress, with its incredibly small waist. Although this room is full of fabric and the trappings of dressmaking, including the mandatory sewing machine, no one actually appears to be making anything.

A few specialised in making hats, as shown in Edgar Degas’ The Millinery Shop (1879/86). While husbands and partners were expected to pay for a woman’s hats, their choice was hers, and hers alone.

Jean Béraud’s fashionably-dressed Milliner on the Champs Elysées is enjoying her success, and carrying her work in two large hatboxes. She has also attracted the attention of the well-dressed man in a top hat behind and to the left of her.

Les Modistes (Two Milliners in the Rue du Caire, Paris) from 1885-86 is one of Paul Signac’s transitional paintings to Seurat’s Divisionism. These two young milliners are busy making fashionable hats and making their way into bourgeois life.

Pierre-Georges Jeanniot’s At the Milliner (1901) shows the milliner in a mirror at the right.

Millinery was one of the staples of fashion houses like that of Paquin, whose success was characteristic of the late nineteenth century, and shown in Henri Gervex’s Five Hours at Paquin’s from 1906.

The purpose of these expensive hand-made hats was for show, when the lady was seen in appropriate surroundings. Jeanniot’s painting of the patrons of one of the most fashionable hotels in Paris shows all the hats out on parade in the inner garden of the Paris Ritz in fine weather.

Béraud’s Workers leaving the Maison Paquin (1907) shows the ladies who worked in Jeanne Paquin’s highly successful fashion house in the Rue de la Paix, as they left work at the end of the day.

A select few were fortunate enough to marry into the middle class and forge a more secure future for themselves.

Béraud’s After the Service at the Church of Sainte-Trinité (the ‘American Cathedral’) (c 1900) shows affluent Franco-American society at the turn of the century, and the prominence of hats and clothes.