The little pleasures in this old man's life.

Old Peasant Lighting a Pipe (c. 1660) was painted by Johann Carl Loth (1632-1698), a German Baroque artist active in Venice.

The old man does not not have a lot of money, evidenced by the holes in his clothes, his disheveled hair, and the simple food at the table. Life has taken its toll on him, and he looks to be living alone. But that does not mean that he is unhappy. After dinner, he takes the time to enjoy his pipe.

And while I am no expert in the different types of pipes, this straight pipe seems longer than the ones we know today. The length of the pipe means that the smoke takes longer to travel through the stem to reach the mouth, meaning that it will be less warm than a shorter pipe (making it more gentle).

 The little pleasures in this old man's life. Old Peasant

Cardiff Docks (1894) is wonderful combination of industrialization, light, and smokestacks.

The capital of Wales is painted by the American artist Lionel Walden and on display in the capital of France...

OK, he did live in each of those countries, so it is probably not that surprising.

 Cardiff Docks (1894) is wonderful combination of

The girls in Millais' Autumn Leaves don't seem be a big fan. They try to make a bonfire but their gloomy expressions say it all.

John Everett Millais wanted to paint the temporary nature of youth and the smoke, dead leaves, and the sunset are all expressions of the transient nature of life.

 Do you love or hate fall? The girls in Millais' Autumn

A symphony in white, silver, gray, and yellow.

Smoke of Ambergris (1880) is an Oriental painting by the American-born globetrotter John Singer Sargent (1856-1925).

It shows a woman in Tangier (Morocco), dressed in an elaborate garment, which she holds over a silver censer to capture the perfumed smoke of a waxy, flammable substance extracted from whales. This substance, called ambergris was believed to be an aphrodisiac.

While Sargent started the project in Morocco, he finished it in his studio in Paris. The scene is not completely realistic, as Sargent hired a model in Morocco to pose for him,  combined elements from various Oriental cultures, and still wanted to appeal to his non-Oriental audience who did not know too much about Oriental cultures.

Finally, the full image is a little big bigger than the one I posted here, but for clarity, I cropped the image a bit from the top.