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.

Wabi-sabi is the Japanese aesthetic of impermanence, asymmetry, and the beauty of what is worn. Eight paintings that hold the register — Hokusai, Hiroshige, Hammershøi, Vermeer, Cézanne, Whistler, and the still-life painters of restraint.