Quiescence of Light and Solitude: Vilhelm Hammershøi

I remember watching Gabriel Axel's 1987 film Babette's Feast (Babettes gæstebud) when I was a child and being completely enchanted by its andante tempo, the sense of spirituality that comes from a certain respect for/ faithfulness to puritanical aesthetics, its quietness, its poetry, and of course, the gorgeousness of Babette's magnificent feast. Babette's Feast remains one of the films I love the most, and as I discovered Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershøi's works last night, I was reminded of this unique sense of beauty.

Hammershøi's paintings of women dressed in plain, dark clothes with their porcelaneous napes facing the viewer, create a curious emotion of vulnerability mixed with mysteriousness. Whilst his paintings of interiors with simple furniture (which he painted of his house at Strandgade 30 in Copenhagen) focus your attention on how stunning the light is — its movement, its stillness, its subtlety, and its quiet elegance. The enigmatic silence, the grey palette, and tender simplicity in these paintings seem to be calling to us, inviting us to hear their stories. For me, Hammershøi's art is exquisite, alluring, and elegantly arouses the viewer's desire of stepping inside his seemingly austere world — one that is filled with beautiful intrigue.

Vilhelm Hammershøi, Hvile, also called Rest (detail), 1905, oil on canvas. Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Vilhelm Hammershøi, Interior with Young Woman from Behind (1903-1904), Randers Kunstmuseum.

Vilhelm Hammershøi, Interior with Woman at Piano, Strandgade 30, 1901 (oil on canvas, 55.9 x 45.1 cm). Private collection.

Many of his paintings show empty rooms or often include the profile, or view from the back, of his wife in a long dark dress. These interior paintings always show rooms inside his own home and due to their popularity Hammershøi's other subjects have been slightly overshadowed. He has painted sublime landscapes and architectural pictures that emit a lonely, derserted and empty feeling. There are definite elements of modernism in his work from the use of a muted palette and his frequent use of exagerated light to the creation of similar yet subtly different paintings. Yet it is the interiors that remain the most popular due to the way they emit a solitary atmosphere devoid of life but still providing a real emphasis on a feeling of space.

{Source: hammershoi.co.uk}

Vilhelm Hammershøi, Interior, 1899.

Vilhelm Hammershøi, Bedroom, 1890.

Hammershoi was seen in his own time as an artist who it could be said looked backwards and seemed old fashioned due to his tonal paintings. This is particularly so if comparison is made to striking colourful modernist artists of Hammershoi's time such as Henri Matisse (1869-1954). In fact Hammershoi is somewhat of an enigma to place and perhaps that is where his popularity stems from. From being anti-modernist in his own time, he reaches out to our very modern world even if he can't quite be placed as symbolist, existentialist or modernist.

{Source: hammershoi.co.uk}

Vilhelm Hammershøi, Sunbeams or Sunshine. Dust Motes Dancing in the Sunbeams, 1900 (oil on canvas, 70 x 59 cm). Ordrupgaard, Copenhagen.

 

Vilhelm Hammershøi, White Doors, 1905.

Vilhelm Hammershøi, Interior, Strandgade 30.

Hammershøi's most compelling works are his quiet, haunting interiors, their emptiness disturbed only occasionally by the presence of a solitary, graceful figure, often the artist's wife. Painted within a small tonal range of implied greys, these sparsely-furnished rooms exude an almost hypnotic quietude and sense of melancholic introspection. In addition to the interiors, the exhibition also includes Hammershøi’s arresting portraits, landscapes and his evocative city views, notably the deserted streets of London on a misty winter morning. The magical quietness of Hammershøi’s work can be seen in the context of international Symbolist movements of the turn of the last century but the containment and originality of his art makes it unique.

{Source: Royal Academy of Arts exhibition, Vilhelm Hammershøi: Poetry of Silence.}

Vilhelm Hammershøi, En ung brystsyg pige (1888) 

Fynen Art Museum, Odense

Vilhelm Hammershøi, Seated Female Nude

Vilhelm Hammershøi, Portrait d'une jeune fille (Anna)

*See more of his artworks and read more about him:

Vilhelm Hammershøi entry in Denmark's artist database
Vilhelm Hammershøi at the Royal Academy: the poetry of silence (gallery) @ The Guardian
Vilhelm Hammershøi 2008 exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art
Vilhelm Hammershøi gallery at Art in the Picture
Vilhelm Hammershøi biography and image galleries at Hammershoi.co.uk
Vilhelm Hammershøi on Wikipedia 


A few sequences from Babette's Feast...