The drama of “The Scream” and the poetry of silence: Edvard Munch, born in 1863, and Vilhelm Hammershoi, born 1864, are the only Nordic painters in history who outgrew their native countries to become a presence in European art. In 2005, the Royal Academy’s Munch show changed our perception of one of these highly charged, melancholy talents. Now a smaller, quieter retrospective, opening today, is just as revelatory in bringing alive the delicate, questing sensibility of Hammershoi and widening, too, our grasp of how Scandinavian art enriched the modernist melting pot.

Hammershoi lived most of his life in one high-ceilinged apartment, at 30 Strandgade, in a historic dockside quarter of Copenhagen. Before he moved in, he had the place decorated entirely in pale grey and cream, and these monochrome hues determine the subtle charcoal-ivory-white palette – with hints of plum, ochre, sienna, green – with which he depicted, relentlessly, obsessively, the rooms, walls, floors, doors, windows and occasional spartan items of furniture in his home.