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| Federico Zandomeneghi The Awakening 1895 oil on canvas Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
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| Carel Weight Hamlet and his Mother (Act III scene 4) ca. 1960 oil on board Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford-upon-Avon |
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| William Somerville Shanks A Question of Colour ca. 1910 oil on canvas The Hepworth, Wakefield, Yorkshire |
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| Carl Seiler Conversation Piece ca. 1890 oil on panel Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Carl Seiler Count Brühl's Goat 1892 oil on panel Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Dante Gabriel Rossetti The Annunciation (Ecce Ancilla Domini!) ca. 1849-50 oil on canvas Tate Britain |
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| Pasquale Ottino Supper at Emmaus ca. 1610-20 oil on canvas Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona |
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| Pietro Longhi The Alchemist 1757 oil on canvas Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice |
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| Alphonse Legros Three Men around a Table before 1911 drawing Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
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| Leo von König At the Breakfast Table 1907 oil on canvas Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin |
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| Leandro Ramón Garrido Woman in a Kitchen ca. 1900 oil on canvas Pannett Art Gallery, Whitby, Yorkshire |
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| Henry Fuseli Blind Milton dictating to his Daughter 1794 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Giovanni Andrea de Ferrari Esau and Jacob before 1669 oil on canvas Accademia Ligustica di Belle Arti, Genoa |
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| Donato Creti St Peter with an Angel visiting St Agatha in Prison before 1749 drawing Musée du Louvre |
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| Frederic William Burton Hellelil and Hildebrand: The Meeting on the Turret Stairs (scene from a medieval Danish ballad) 1864 watercolor and gouache on paper National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin |
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| Anonymous French Artist Christ and Nicodemus by Candlelight 18th century drawing Musée du Louvre |
"Historical painters, attaching more importance to the attitudes and physiognomy of their figures than to the other parts of their composition, attend less to small details, the faithful imitation of which is the essential merit of the painter of interiors. Besides, the historical painter is never in a position to see the whole of the scene he would represent, while the painter of interiors, having constantly his model before him, sees it completely, as he imitates it upon the canvas. Hence, therefore, in every small composition the colours, as well as the objects represented, must be distributed with a kind of symmetry, so as to avoid being what I can best express by the term spotty. In fact, for want of a good distribution of objects, the canvas will not be filled in some parts, or, if it is, there will be, in many places, evident confusion; so also if the colours be not properly distributed, the picture will be spotty, because they are too far isolated from the others."
– Eugène Chevreul, from The Laws of Contrast of Colour: and Their Application to the Arts (1839), translated by John Spanton (1859)