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| Harold Knight The Embroideress 1921 oil on canvas Aberdeen Art Gallery |
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| Ronald Allan Sewing 1929 oil on canvas Manchester Art Gallery |
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| John Lavery Woman painting a Pot 1888 oil on canvas Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow |
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| Caspar Netscher The Lacemaker 1662 oil on canvas Wallace Collection, London |
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| Camille Pissarro Mme. Pissarro sewing beside a Window ca. 1877 oil on canvas Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
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| James McBey Woman writing at a Secretaire 1932 oil on board Aberdeen Art Gallery |
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| Angelica Kauffmann Personification of Design (making a study-drawing the Belvedere Torso) ca. 1778-80 oil on canvas Royal Academy of Arts, London |
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| Adriaen Isenbrant Portrait of a Lady as the Magdalen before 1551 oil on panel National Trust, Polesden Lacey, Surrey |
from A Letter to Sir Henry Goodyer
It should be no interruption to your pleasures, to hear me often say that I love you, and that you are as much my meditations as my self: I often compare not you and me, but the sphear in which your resolutions are, and my wheel; both I hope concentrique to God: for me thinks the new Astronomie is thus appliable well, that we which are a little earth, should rather move towards God, than that he which is fulfilling, and can come no whither, should move towards us. To your life full of variety, nothing is old, nor new to mine; and as to that life, all stickings and hesitations seem stupid and stony, so to this, all fluid slipperinesses, and transitory migrations seem giddie and featherie. In that life one is ever in the porch or postern, going in or out, never within his house himself: It is a garment made of remnants, a life raveld out into ends, a line discontinued, and a number of small wretched points, uselesse, because they concurre not: A life built of past and future, not proposing any constant present; they have more pleasures than we, but not more pleasure; they joy oftner, we longer; and no man but of so much understanding as may deliver him from being a fool, would change with a mad-man, which had a better proportion of wit in his often Lucidis.
– John Donne (ca. 1608)
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| Lawrence Alma-Tadema Laura Theresa - Sweet Industry 1904 oil on canvas Manchester Art Gallery |
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| William Dyce Titian preparing to make his first essay in colouring 1856-57 oil on canvas Aberdeen Art Gallery |
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| Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin House of Cards 1735 oil on canvas National Trust, Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire |
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| Charles Neil Knight A Conversation Piece ca. 1941 oil on canvas Victoria Art Gallery, Bath |
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| Henry Herbert La Thangue The Connoisseur 1887 oil on canvas Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford, Yorkshire |
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| Carel Weight The Library ca. 1970-71 oil on canvas Touchstones Rochdale, Lancashire |
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| Anna Zinkeisen Night Duty ca. 1955 oil on canvas Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford, Yorkshire |