As if to draw our attention to the underlying abstraction of the composition, the artist doesn't paint the knob on the door. It would have been an unnecessary detail upsetting the compositional structure that gives the picture its feeling of stability and calm.
Hammershoi died in 1916, aged only 52. He lived with his wife as a near recluse, painting only a few pictures a year. Many of these show the interior of the couple's neat, clean flat at Strandgade 30, which was also his studio, at different times of the day and night. He treats his domestic surroundings as a still life, rearranging the furniture and framed pictures in each new composition, while adding and deleting figures in what amounts to a series of visual themes and variations.