Vilhelm Hammershøi

Positioned within a broader reassessment of European modernism, Hammershøi emerges as a figure of quiet consequence. As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote of the artist, ‘Hammershøi is not one of those artists that one needs to talk about quickly. His work is long and slow and at whatever moment one comes to grips with it, one will have ample occasion to speak of what is significant and essential in art.’

About the artist
Drawing from both the past and his present, Hammershøi created a highly individual artistic language that has captured the imaginations of contemporary audiences from beyond his native Denmark. Born in Copenhagen in 1864, the son of a merchant, Hammershøi remained loyal to his hometown where he lived until his death in 1916. Through early travels to the European centers of Paris and London with his wife, Ida Hammershøi, née Ilsted, whom he married in 1891, he familiarized himself with the rapidly evolving international art of his time. Yet, it was Dutch 17th-century genre painting, particularly the enigmatic domestic interiors of Johannes Vermeer, and the early 19th-century Danish Golden Age, that became a wellspring of inspiration for the artist. Following their travels, the couple settled in their 17th-century apartment, Strandgade 30, in the Christianshavn district of Copenhagen, where they would reside from 1898 to 1909. Described by his contemporaries as a recluse, the artist preferred to paint at home rather than in a studio, resisting the influences and distractions of the outside world. Hammershøi’s interior paintings, each depiction imbued with a contemplative stillness, were to remain the artist’s enduring fascination and most renowned motif.

Major international retrospectives and exhibitions of his work over the last 20 years have been held at The Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (2008), Kunsthalle München, Germany (2012) and Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art, Japan (2020), among others.