Art Guide · Styles

Everyday life

Streets, rooms and crowds

Everyday-life or genre painting shows ordinary people at home, in the street and at leisure. It stretches from Vermeer’s kitchens to Renoir’s dances and Hopper’s diner.

Shop Everyday life posters Poster prints of these works are in the collection.

Last updated: 3 October 2026 · Iconica Society editors

In brief

The genre developed in the 17th-century Netherlands with quiet interiors such as Vermeer’s Milkmaid. In the 19th century the Impressionists painted cafés, dances, ballet rehearsals and the streets of Paris. In the 20th century Hopper used the same genre to convey urban loneliness.