James Abbott McNeill Whistler painted Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 in his London Chelsea studio in autumn 1871. The 144.3 × 162.4 centimetre oil-on-canvas shows the artist's 67-year-old mother Anna Matilda McNeill Whistler seated in profile against a flat grey wall. Whistler titled the painting NOT as a portrait of his mother but as an arrangement of two colours — the work that began the late-19th-century 'art for art's sake' movement.

Jan van Eyck painted what is now called the Arnolfini Portrait in 1434 in Bruges, almost certainly on commission from the Italian merchant Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini for an unknown purpose that has been debated continuously for almost 600 years. The 82.2 × 60 centimetre oak-panel painting carries Van Eyck's painted signature on the rear wall above a convex mirror — Johannes de Eyck fuit hic 1434 — and the convex mirror reflects two additional figures the rest of the compos

An empty Copenhagen room. North light on bare floorboards. A single half-open door. Vilhelm Hammershøi spent thirty years painting his own apartment at Strandgade 30, and built the European art of stillness one canvas at a time.