The stillness of the interiors with women reading letters puts you in mind of Vermeer, and some of the pictures showing seated women looking through doorways may owe something to the interiors of Pieter de Hooch. The formal arrangements of furniture and picture frames coupled with Hammershoi's palette of modulated greys, blacks and whites are close in tone to James McNeill Whistler, the one contemporary artist we know the Dane admired.