"He always paints the same thing." This is how a critic expressed his irritation regarding Vilhelm Hammershøi's (1864-1916) quiet interior paintings. Hammershøi's oeuvre had long been forgotten outside Scandinavia and puzzled even his contemporaries. The painter tirelessly focused on bourgeois interiors, imbuing them with an unusual melancholy through his monochromatic color choices. Following in the footsteps of Jan Vermeer and Caspar David Friedrich, Hammershøi grappled with central issues of interior painting. In the careful observation of introspective figures, empty spaces, and framed furnishings such as windows, paintings, and mirrors, an aesthetic paradox is revealed. For behind the everyday scenes lies a fundamental problem of interior painting, which always presents the private as something displayed.