Vilhelm Hammershøi was one of the most well-known artists in Scandinavia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was celebrated for his subdued and quiet paintings of interiors, often populated by figures with their backs turned. His earlier work, showing daily life’s stale banality, are more popular than his later paintings, which critics felt became too detailed and lost their simplicity and magical quality. Almost 100 years after his death, Hammershøi’s painting Da Læser et Brev (Ida Reading a Letter) (1899) sold at auction for over $2 million—the record for a Danish work of art.