It’s not that long ago that a great many homes in the UK and Europe were heated by open fires. During the 1960s, the house where I lived in the suburbs of London had a single main fireplace burning ‘smokeless’ processed coal throughout the winter months. Even after colour television came in the early 1970s, the National Coal Board was advertising the virtues of open fires in the home. Today’s paintings of interiors show fireplaces and the objects we surrounded them with.

Jules Breton’s Grandfather’s Birthday (1864) shows three generations of a Courrières family living in modest comfort, although their floors are made of bare and worn tiles, furniture is sparse, and the fire is hardly alight. One of the grandchildren is just about to present their grandpa with a simple birthday cake, no icing, as another of the women prepares a celebratory meal in the kitchen. Maybe some firewood might have been a better present. This fireplace has an unusually high mantelpiece, providing just enough room to fit in some cherished plates below the ceiling.

Judging by the thin summer dress worn by the young woman reading in Francis Davis Millet’s Cosey Corner from 1884, the fire burning in this open hearth is primarily to boil water in the large black kettle for her cup of tea. This is a more modern fireplace fabricated in wrought iron. It has a grate to let spent ashes drop into the ash tray underneath, making it simpler to remove them before building the first fire of the day. On either side of the fire are fire dogs, and a kettle is suspended above the glowing embers.

Virginie Demont-Breton’s original painting of The Man is at Sea, above, was completed in or before 1889. This shows a fisherman’s wife warming herself and her sleeping infant by the fire, while her husband is away fishing at sea. It was exhibited at the Salon in 1889, following which it was rapidly engraved for prints. Later that year, Vincent van Gogh saw an image of that painting when he was undergoing treatment in the Saint Paul asylum at Saint-Rémy, and made a copy of it, shown below.

Laurits Andersen Ring’s contrasting The Artist’s Wife and Children, from 1904, shows his wife Sigrid with their young son and daughter, in front of the roaring fire typical of the more affluent middle class home in the early twentieth century. The fireplace is here built into a substantial structure.

Carl Larsson’s Christmas Eve from 1904 shows his large extended family gathering to celebrate in grand style, with a huge turkey, a roaring fire in the large open fireplace, and a cat under the table, trying to get into the party.

William McGregor Paxton’s open fire In the Studio (1905) is appropriately classy and glows confidently 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.

Among Douglas Fox Pitt’s views of domestic interiors, Interior with Maid from about 1913 is notable for its display of two of the artist’s collection of paintings by the Camden Town Group. 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). The fire is being tended by a maid, and is thoroughly suburban, with tools including a poker at the left. Its mantelpiece is relatively low, and home to a precisely arranged row of ornaments.

Henry Tonks’ Sodales – Mr Steer and Mr Sickert (1930) shows two British painters in their old age: Philip Wilson Steer is dozing in front of the fire while Walter Sickert was visiting him at home in Cheyne Walk, London. This mantelpiece is cluttered with various small objects.

As the number of rooms not primarily used for sleeping accommodation grew, every good home came to have a dining room, usually adjacent to the kitchen. This was more or less filled by a table where the whole family, and sometimes its guests, could sit and eat. A few dining rooms have been captured in paint.

Gustave Courbet’s After Dinner in Ornans from 1849 marks the start of his series of realist paintings of everyday life in his home town in rural France. Four middle-class men have just finished dining together in a dark room with a flagstone floor. As one lights a tobacco pipe, the man at the right plays his violin to entertain them. A large hunting dog is curled asleep under a chair, and the man lighting his pipe is still wearing his hat and a long coat.

Nearly forty years later, 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, although she appears more anonymously as a type rather than a character. This is a far cry from rural Ornans, with its uniformed maid, a spotless tablecloth, plush curtains and a potted plant in the window.

Under the Lamp, painted by Marie Bracquemond in 1887, shows Alfred Sisley and his wife dining in the Braquemonds’ house at Sèvres.

Vincent van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters (1885) is a revealing insight into the lives of poor labourers in Nuenen, who are about to feast on a large dish of potatoes under the light of an oil lamp. This dining room appears more improvised, with a table that’s too low to accommodate their knees, and barely enough space to pour out coffee.

In another world just over a decade 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. On top of the dresser are some of the peculiar objects we gather through life.

Further north in Sweden, Carl Larsson’s wife Karin is Getting Ready for a Game (1901) as she prepares a tray of refreshments in her dining room. The grown-ups are about to enjoy an evening of cards together with friends.

Fashions for tablecloths and domestic fabrics changed, and by the time that Maurice Denis painted this Breakfast the same year, their patterns overwhelmed the eye.

William McGregor Paxton, a great admirer of Vermeer who adopted the Dutch master’s optical techniques, seems to have painted The Breakfast in 1911 as a ‘problem picture’. As their maid walks out of the dining room, a young wife stares thoughtfully away from her husband, who is showing no interest in her at all, as he hides behind the pages of a broadsheet newspaper. You could cut the atmosphere here with a knife.

In Édouard Vuillard’s Reading in the Dining Room, Vaucresson, Lucy Hessel has already pushed her chair back from the dining table, left her husband Jos reading the newspaper, and is busying herself in the next room.

Evening by the Lamp from 1921 is one of Bonnard’s lamplit interiors, although perhaps by now this room also has electric light. Sat at this dining table are a woman pouring tea, and a grey-haired man.

Finally, Bonnard’s wife Marthe, who developed a lasting fondness for white high-heeled shoes, is seen in his painting of Marthe in the Dining Room from 1933.