Romantic lighting

Adolph Menzel, Balcony Room, 1845. Menzel was well known in his day for sweeping nationalistic paintings.
He apparently made delicate views like this as personal studies and never exhibited them.
I find this one exceptional—like a Degas 25 years before its time.

Constantin Hansen, Danish artists in Rome, 1837

Georg Friedrich Kersting, Couple at the Window, 1815

Georg Friedrich Kersting, Woman Embroidering, 1811. This seems to reference Vermeer

Léon Cogniet, The Artist in His Room at the Villa Medici, Rome, 1817

Caspar David Friedrich, View from the Artist's Studio–Window on the Right, 1805-6

Georg Friedrich Kersting, In Front of the Mirror, 1827

attributed to Martin Drolling, Interior with View of Saint-Eustache, ca. 1810

Martinus Rørbye, View from the Artist's Window, 1825

I couldnt resist adding a photo of one of my windows

Henry Fox Talbot, Latticed Oriel Window at Lacock Abbey, 1835
Talbot produced a negative when he made the image—this is a print from his original I believe.

Online I came across an exhibit on at the Metropolitan— I have not yet seen it but it looks fantastic: Rooms with a View: The Open Window in the 19th Century (April 5—July 4, 2011). It examines the Romantic motif of the open window captured by German, Danish, French, and Russian artists of the first half of the 19th century. Introducing these works with reference to genre painting, which stretches back to the 16th century, the exhibit's web site defines the open window theme more specifically: 

Juxtaposing near and far, the window is a metaphor for unfulfilled longing. Painters distilled this feeling in pictures of hushed, spare rooms with contemplative figures; studios with artists at work; and open windows as the sole motif. As the exhibition reveals, these pictures may shift markedly in tone, yet they share a distinct absence of the anecdote and narrative that characterized earlier genre painting.

Some of the images here are in the show, some are ones I gathered. There are differences here of framing and intent: some focus on the world beyond the room, some highlight the world at hand-- the room and its contents. Other images appear to be mostly about the light. I include one of the earliest photographs, made in 1835 by Henry Fox Talbot of a window in his home. By that time he would have been familiar with the Romantic conceit although I doubt that was what he was after when taking this.

I hope to update when I get to the show...