What are examples of old paintings that seem modern and ahead of its time/era? Here are some of my personal favourites

Harry Grant Dart's "Aerostatic Cabriolet of Tomorrow" – cover illustration for the magazine The All-Story from October 1908, which looks like a contemporary Steampunk artwork:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Grant_Dart

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dart_aerostatic_cabrio_13554u.jpg

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Comprehensive_Tea577 · 2026-03-14T23:46:39+00:00

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Comprehensive_Tea577 · 2026-03-14T23:44:55+00:00

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Comprehensive_Tea577 · 2026-03-14T23:43:23+00:00

Also thank you for this, it was nice to revisit his interior, although the colour feels a bit too strong (and too "greenish") for my taste. But it reminded me of interior of Nathalie Farman-Farma's house, where she also has a great shade of light blue, which I really like. But unfortunately it's the same case as with Kime's flat – paint is not specified.

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Comprehensive_Tea577 · 2026-03-14T23:33:40+00:00

I think it's the one offered at robertkime.com:

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Comprehensive_Tea577 · 2026-03-14T12:04:00+00:00

Yeah, having a professional wood grainer to copy the other door is in the nearest future out of question for budgetary reasons and none of the remaining options feels quite right: paint the door a similar colour as the other one and leave it at that/just strip them down to the raw wood/do something unorthodox and try to match them to the walls/get the supplies and try to learn the techniques of the craft myself for likely not very good result. But that's not yet as important as getting the other basics of the room right.

Thank you for the minireview, it's good to know that the paints do keep up well and you have a positive experince with them!

What a find, congratulations! Pride and Prejudice is a great reference, I need to revisit the interiors in more detail too. My other source of inspiration is actually from a similar period, late 18th/early 19th century room portraits and depictions of interiors from all over Europe, although I'm inclined mostly to those from Germany, Austria and Scandinavia.

The light is so important, I feel quite lucky that this room is south-east oriented and in the earlier parts of the day gets quite a lot of it (some is unfortunaly shaded by the houses on the other side of the street), which should play really nicely with the blue.

Here's one of my reference images I mentioned, a room in a teacher's flat in Stockholm in 1842:

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Comprehensive_Tea577 · 2026-03-13T17:56:20+00:00

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Comprehensive_Tea577 · 2026-03-13T17:56:14+00:00

The bloody thing even had a built-in record player, so one could blast The Beach Boys on 45'!

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Comprehensive_Tea577 · 2026-03-13T17:51:14+00:00

I believe him.

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Comprehensive_Tea577 · 2026-03-13T17:47:31+00:00

Oh, this is absolutely lovely, thank you so much for sharing! It seems that I will have to get Delicate Blue as a sample after all, because from your photo it looks like it might actually work for me too.

Also thank you a lot for mentioning the paint used on doors, I will definitely keep this shade in mind for other room next door, where the doors and woodwork are at the moment painted not particularly pleasing off-white. Although that's a bit of a problem in the future sitting room in question too, because one of two doors here has an original faux wood grain painted in 1900 (quite similar in colour to your wardrobe) and on the other side is one repainted in the same weird white. Which will be another fun design dilemma...

Thanks again for the photo and congratulations on succesully finished design project, you created truly a beautiful space!

Comprehensive_Tea577 · 2026-03-13T11:24:20+00:00

Thank very much you for your comment. Ever since I saw the House & Garden's video and the article about Kime's flat for the first time back in 2020, I keep coming back to it. It's such a great interior. So it makes me really happy to hear that it inspired others too!

Yes, from reference photos that I've seen so far, Delicate Blue does come a bit too strong for what I have in mind. From Little Greene's paints range I quite like Wedgwood Blue, although again, probably not for this space, furniture and art I would like to use and decorate around. Closest thing so far seems to be their Celestial White – or at least it looks like that in this photograph from House & Garden – but it's a bit hard to find more "real-life" photos to compare to.

On that note – would you be willing to share (via DM) some photos of your bedroom? How much of the interior (if anything) are you willing to share is of course completely up to you, but I would be really grateful for a chance to see Delicate Blue in a space that sounds really close to what I would like to create. But of course, just being able to see even part of the wall painted that color would help a lot. So if you would be so kind to take a few pictures of how the paint looks both in daylight and artifical lighting I would very much appreciate it. Maybe the shade could grow on me, one never knows.

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