1864 -1916
Vilhelm Hammershøi
Hammershøi was the last great painter in Danish nineteenth-century art. He painted against a background of modern experience, but his painting never broke with the basic rules that had defined the point of departure for the pictures of the Danish Golden Age. His work therefore has a distinctive, striking character which expresses both his independent artistic temperament and a longing for the Golden Age whose foundations had been reduced to ruins.
In 1898 Hammershøi moved with his wife Ida to the house on Strandgade 30 where they lived until 1909. The intimate artistic association with central Copenhagen gave his art a new direction. Whereas his motifs had formerly alternated between figure and landscape painting, this location truly made Hammershøi a painter of interiors. The rooms became his constant source of subjects, and the walls and windows that formed the boundary against the world almost literally became the background for his painting.
Oil on canvas
82,5 x 64 cm
(1884)
Oil on canvas
82,5 x 64 cm
(1884)
Interior with the Artist’s Mother and Sister
Oil on canvas
37 x 35 cm
1887
Oil on canvas
37 x 35 cm
1887
Young Girl Sewing. Anna Hammershøi.
Oil on canvas
46 x 55 cm
1892
Oil on canvas
46 x 55 cm
1892
Portrait of Svend Hammershøi
Oil on canvas
52 x 70 cm
1893
Oil on canvas
52 x 70 cm
1893
Tirsdagsskoven.
42,5 x 39,5 cm
1899
42,5 x 39,5 cm
1899
White Doors. Strandgade 30
Oil on canvas
70 x 59 cm
1900
Oil on canvas
70 x 59 cm
1900
Sunbeams or Sunlight. Dust Motes Dancing in the Sunbeams. Strandgade 30
This picture looks like a study of the light in all its forms: In the vibrant play of reflections over the walls and in the fall of the light shadows across the floor, the light almost seems to dissolve the fixed boundaries of the room. At the same time it takes on its own fixed form, penetrating with such strength and presence that it manifests its own reality. Almost tangibly, it falls in from the window and lies like a geometrical form across the floor. At once visible and non-material, it takes on a mystical quality captured in the concrete scene. Hammershøi in fact called the picture purely and simply Sunshine or Sunbeams when he exhibited it. It was only later given its more lyrically narrative title Dust Motes Dancing in the Sunbeams.
Oil on canvas
63 x 52,5 cm
1901
Oil on canvas
63 x 52,5 cm
1901
Interior. With Piano and Woman in Black. Strandgade 30
A typical figure in Hammershøi’s work is the woman with her back to us. She stands unmoving as a pillar, not engaged in any action but silently absorbed in her own thoughts. She is like the furniture – and neither the woman nor the furniture demonstrates or carries any real meaning. All the same it is as if an invisible meaning is present. The elements of the picture might suggest an allegory of love and art: not a living, fruitful exchange but an inaccessible tableau where the woman and the objects, encapsulated like objects, first and foremost become an image of melancholy longing.
Oil on canvas
85 x 70,5 cm
(1902)
Oil on canvas
85 x 70,5 cm
(1902)
View of the Frederiksborg Castle
Oil on canvas
85 x 70,5 cm
(1902)
Oil on canvas
85 x 70,5 cm
(1902)
View of the Old Asiatic Company
Oil on canvas
42,5 x 60,5 cm
1903
Oil on canvas
42,5 x 60,5 cm
1903
Sun Shower. Lake Gentofte
Oil on canvas
87,8 x 84 cm
ca. 1910
Oil on canvas
85 x 70,5 cm
1914
Sun Shower. Lake Gentofte
Oil on canvas
69 x 61 cm
1904
Oil on canvas
85 x 70,5 cm
1914
Soirée in the Living Room. Sketch
Oil on canvas
43 x 66 cm
1907
Oil on canvas
43 x 66 cm
1907
Young Forest, Trørød, Summer
It was during a summer course in 1907 that Hammershøi painted this forest image in Trørød north of Copenhagen. As opposed to the artist’s open landscapes, such as Tuesday Forest and Sun Rain. Gentofte Lake in which focus is transferred from the foreground to the middle ground, from what is near to the semi-distant, in this painting he draws our attention to the shrubby young forest of the foreground. In addition he points out a way into the composition in the form of a forest path in the right side of the picture – a very unusual feature for a landscape painting. The painting is also unique in its monochromatic and blurred interpretation of the forest motif, which with its impalpable light and diffuse texture presents the forest area as a world without references despite the designation of place in the title.
Oil on canvas
55 x 55 cm
1907
Oil on canvas
55 x 55 cm
1907
Interior with Cabinet Sofa
Oil on canvas
71 x 91 cm
1909
Oil on canvas
71 x 91 cm
1909
Interior from the Great Hall in Lindegården
Oil on canvas
82,5 x 64 cm
ca. 1910
Oil on canvas
82,5 x 64 cm
ca. 1910
Young Girl Sewing.
Oil on canvas
64,5 x 52 cm
1913
Oil on canvas
64,5 x 52 cm
1913
The Tall Windows
Oil on canvas
85 x 70,5 cm
1914
Oil on canvas
85 x 70,5 cm
1914