In the middle of the nineteenth century, as cities across Europe were growing rapidly, the Arts and Crafts Movement spread from its origins in England to bring a new wave of interest in furniture and other features of domestic interiors. This article shows some paintings of interiors by Nordic artists of that period, giving insight into changes in design taking place across the countries of northern Europe.

Prior to this, interiors in much of this region were vernacular, as shown in Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s Rustic Life from 1887. A young woman sits spinning next to a bed, while an older man is repairing one of his boots in front of the open fire. There’s little in the way of furniture, and what there is has been rough-hewn and is functional.

That same year, the young Swedish artist Carl Larsson painted The Toy Corner inside the 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. From 1888, their family home just outside Falun in Dalarna became the centre of Larsson’s watercolours that were later published across Europe as examples that many others aspired to.

Homework (1898) shows two of the Larsson children working in the evening by the light of a kerosene lamp, amid decor designed by their mother.

Getting Ready for a Game (1901) shows Karin Larsson preparing a tray of adult refreshments, while two of their young daughters watch from behind the more appropriate teaset. From the layout of the room seen through the open door, the grown-ups are about to enjoy an evening of cards together with friends, surrounded by one of Karin’s exemplary interiors.

The Danish artist Laurits Andersen Ring married Sigrid Kähler, daughter of a ceramic artist, who seems to have taken more than a passing interest in the design of their domestic interiors.

In Ring’s At Breakfast from 1898, Sigrid sits reading the ‘leftist’ daily newspaper Politiken in the sunshine.

Ring’s 1904 painting of The Artist’s Wife and Children shows Sigrid with their young son and daughter, in front of a roaring fire. In the next room is the same table from At Breakfast above, and the table in the left foreground has a carefully-polished surface allowing Ring to show subtle reflections.

Ring went on to paint more traditional homes, including this Interior with a Farmer Reading a Newspaper from 1911. This farmer, better-off than the average peasant for sure, sits reading the newspaper by the light streaming in from its windows. Roses provide a brilliant splash of colour to the far left, and there’s a clock ticking on the wall. The open doors lead through into the far end of the house, which is sparsely furnished by heavy wooden items like a wardrobe and a chest.

Although life in small villages in the fjords of Norway was more rustic, there was still scope for a little design flair. Nikolai Astrup’s Interior Still Life: Living Room at Sandalstrand from about 1921 includes a tapestry hanging in the corner, a painting on the wall, potted plants, a bowl of fruit, and an articulated wooden figure leaning against the pitcher of milk.

Until relatively recently, Icelandic society had remained strongly traditional, and homes in its capital Reykjavik were decorated in older style. Þórarinn’s glimpse into The Artist’s Home (1924) shows this well.

In the seventeenth century, Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici started collecting self-portraits of painters. This collection has grown to include over two thousand paintings, sculptures and drawings, and is now part of the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, Italy. During the eighteenth century, as painting interiors was developing as a genre, some artists took to painting not just themselves, but their studio as well. Here’s a selection of those.

The American artist John Ferguson Weir’s first major painting was An Artist’s Studio from 1864, in which the artist in question is his father, not himself. It has the air of meticulous veracity, and was exhibited, sold, and brought the painter’s election as an associate of the National Academy.

Paul Cézanne’s roughly painted Stove in the Studio from about 1865 includes the two most important items, the stove to provide heat, and a canvas to provide a painting surface.

Frédéric Bazille’s broad view of his Studio on the Rue La Condamine, from 1869-70, reveals the wide open space that he shared with Renoir at the time. The artist stands at the centre, next to his easel with his View of the Village in progress. Manet painted himself standing in front of Bazille, with a hat and beard.

In 1878, the American artist William Merritt Chase rented the main gallery in the Tenth Street Studio Building at 51 West Tenth Street, Greenwich Village, New York City. For the next seventeen years this was to be his place of work, public image, extended persona, private stage, personal gallery, and the motif for at least a dozen of his paintings.

The building, designed by Richard Morris Hunt, had been completed in 1857, was demolished in 1956, and was one of the first in America to be designed specifically for visual artists. Notable previous occupants include Winslow Homer, Frederic Church, and Albert Bierstadt. When Chase moved in, the building was owned by John Taylor Johnston, who later became the first president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Painted just the year after he moved in, Chase’s Studio Interior (c 1879) is one of his few paintings of studios lacking figures, but shows off his ornately carved wooden chest, a copy of an Old Master, and some of his more exotic props. Chase was quick to recognise the promotional value of his studio: as it grew steadily more exotic, and more populated with his own work, he encouraged the press to write about it, to promote his image as a successful artist.

His Tenth Street Studio from 1880 shows one of his portraiture clients, engaged in discussion with a painter who could be Chase, but recedes into the shadows. At the woman’s feet is an elegant dog, and she is surrounded by intriguing and tasteful objects.

In his Studio Interior (c 1882), another fashionably dressed young woman is glancing through a huge bound collation of Chase’s work, sat by an even grander carved wooden sideboard, decorated with almost outlandish objects including a model ship, a lute, and sundry objets d’art.

A Corner of My Studio (c 1895) is a more formal and finished record of Chase’s studio in its final year. Through the curtained doorway, we see in the distance one of Chase’s students painting diligently.

William McGregor Paxton’s open fire In the Studio (1905) is appropriately classy, glowing in the background. He deliberately defocussed it in what he termed Vermeer’s “binocular vision”. His model is in crisp focus, and as the eye wonders further away from her as the optical centre of the painting, edges and details become progressively more blurred.

Olga Boznańska, the Polish Impressionist, painted this uncomplicated Interior of the artist’s studio in Krakow in 1906.

When Carl Larsson painted his Self-Portrait in his new studio in 1912, he sits back with the ease of a successful artist in his late fities. Around him are the creature comforts furnished by that success, and designed by his wife. There are some gentle touches of eccentricity, like the sword passing through the huge book open in front of him, and the statue whose feet are propping the book up.