Vilhelm Hammershøi - a curious mix of Vermeer, Hopper and Wyeth?

I went to see Vilhelm Hammershøi - The Poetry of Silence last week at the Royal Academy of Arts. This is the first Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916) retrospective in the UK and the exhibition features over 70 paintings spanning the career of this celebrated Danish artist.

cover of the exhibition catalogue

I found both the exhibition and the man to be intriguing and so I bought the catalogue and have been digging around for more information about him as well. Hammerschoi is a Danish artist who was painting at the back end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century - basically at the same time as the development of Impressionism.

Here are some facts about him - and some observations by me having viewed his work last week.

• he's a Danish painter whose work has achieved new-found popularity of late. Michael Palin is a huge fan and owns work by Hammerschoi)

A style at once classical and modern, a weird but heady fusion of Vermeer and Edward Hopper. Vilhelm Hammershoi - World of Interiors by Michael Palin

• his teachers recognised early on that he needed to be allowed to find his own way of expressing himself (artists who allow and encourage people to realise their potential and create based on their own unique unqiue way of seeing the world are real heroes in my eyes)
• he achieved fame at the age of 21 when his portrait of his sister featured in the annual spring exhibition held by the Danish Royal Academy of Fine Arts. There's an excellent account of the heated dispute which followed here.

......its subdued colour, its loose apparently imprecise brushwork and it unclear perspective construction provoked a heated dispute between Academy representatives and De frie Studieskoler (independent study schools)
Hammerschoi - exhibition catalogue

• Like Whistler his enduring motifs in painting style are muted colour and compositions reduced to a few graphic elements. In addition landscapes, streetscapes and rooms are frequently devoid of people and any person in a painting is usually seen from behind.
  

Interior with Woman at Piano, Standgade 30 (1901)

oil on canvas, 55.9 x 45.1cm
Private Collection

• a lot of his paintings are of the interior of his seventeenth century home and many include his wife who is often portrayed from behind. He started to paint Interiors - which form the main basis of his popularity - when he moved to an apartment in Strandgade 30 in the Christianshaven district of Copenhagen (click the link to see where this is). His most productive period was 1898-1909. The interiors are very reminiscent of Dutch seventeenth century paintings of interiors - including those by Vermeer. He recognised Vermeer as having a significant influence on his work.
• His paintings often look down corridors, through doors or have a window in the background - you see the limits of his existence but not what lies beyond.
• paintings of architecture rarely include people - there is an atmosphere of stillness and an alienation from a world which involves people
• Some of his landscapes struck me as almost contemporary in feel. Most are very empty in character - no people and few, if any trees. He's painting tones rather than nature.
• there is very little difference between early and late paintings
• his palette was very muted as you can see in this photograph of his palette.
• he was very reclusive, led a secluded life, avoided appearing in public, had few friends and was also noted for being taciturn - rendering conversation difficult (according to German painter and printmaker Emil Nolde and German poet Rainer Maria Rilke ). He left no journals and destroyed his letters before his death - making him something of a challenge for any curator wanting to write about him!
• He was thought by some to be a victim of neurasthenia - but this was a popular diagnosis around 1900
• He was married - to Ida (who is the model in many of his paintings of interiors)
• He often travelled abroad and was ultimately more famous abroad than at home in Denmark. His paintings certainly sold better abroad.
• He liked London and the British Museum
• He painted a total of 370 works - but people rapidly lost interest in his work after his death in 1916 prior to renewed interest in the 1970s
• Hammerschoi's work is thought of as coming with the Symbolist movement current around the turn of the century

Here are some of the things I like about his paintings

• they appear to be very realistic but in fact are not. Edges are often blurred rather than defined, interiors have been carefully stage-managed and simplified.
• there's a very strong sense of simplification and the abstract - of working out a balance of horizontal and vertical lines, between different sized shapes and planes and the overall tonal range. All detail unnecessary to the painting is eliminated.
• The grays he uses actually contain colour but are always quiet - it's fascinating to try and work out why paintings which are so monochromatic actually work.
• he crops his subject matter in an interesting way - it's almost as if his focus is permanently in the middle distance and that he doesn't pay much attention to the foreground/bottom section of the painting. I noticed with one painting that there was precise definition and hard edges to a piece of china sat on a table in the middle distance while edges associated with objects nearer to were fuzzy. It made me wonder about his eyesight and whether he was naturally long-sighted.
• He paints a figure but rarely paints a person. (I have some empathy with this approach rarely include faces in my sketches of people in interiors)
• he paints architecture from a different perspective - he's the only person I know who has chosen to paint the side of the British Museum!
• he never goes OTT - he leaves you wanting to know more.

I bought the hardback catalogue to the exhibition as the reproduction of images was better - and frankly when you're dealing with shades of grey you want the best reproduction you can get! It contains, as you would expect, large images of the pictures in the exhibition, a more detailed listing of catalogue entries for all pictures with precise details of each painting, ownership, where it has been previously exhibited and a commentary on each picture. At the end there is a detailed chronology on Hammerschoi's life together with archive photographs. The main images are arranged in chronological order and are preceded by a synopsis describing what happened in each period of his life. The catalogue also contains two essays concerning

• a narrative about Hammerschoi's work in the context of his life and the environment of his time
• a look at the content in terms of Danish painting
• links between Hammerschoi's paintings of interiors and seventeenth century Dutch Golden Age of Interior paintings

Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised to know that I've created a site as a home for all the links to information that I found - you can see it here Vilhelm Hammershøi - Resources for Art Lovers. It now has a stack of links to:

• information about his life
• information about exhibitions of his work (eg the current exhibition at the RA)
• videos of his work (eg Highlights of the exhibition at the RA )
• slideshows of his work (eg like this one produced by the Guardian - which also includes archive photos of him)
• educational publications such as those produced by the RA - the interactive graphic (which analyses and explains the above painting) and the education guide (a PDF publication)
  
• where you can see images online - and his paintings in museums and art galleries
• reviews of his work
• Jonathan Jones (The Guardian) found his work to be about nothingness
• while Maev Kennedy (also The Guardian) looked at the man of silence

Palin suggests he's a Danish version of a mix of Vermeer and Edward Hopper. However, I've been working on a similar site about Andrew Wyeth (there'll be a blog post soon!) and I guess what struck me is that there are some marked similarities between the two men - in terms of some aspects of their work and pallette and the reclusive nature of both men.

It left me wondering whether reclusive people avoid painting with any kind of brash colour. What do you think?

Notes: Authors of the catalogue include

• Felix Krämer works at the Hamburger Kunsthalle.
• Naoki Sato is curator at the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo.
• Anne-Birgitte Fonsmark is Director of the Ordrupgaard in Copenhagen, the Danish museum of French Impressionism and 19th-century Danish art. She was formerly curator at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen. Her research has mainly been devoted to Danish and French art.

Links

• Vilhelm Hammershøi - The Poetry of Silence The exhibition finishes on 7th September before transferring to the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, Japan for an exhibition 30 September – 7 December 2008,
• the Royal Academy of Arts.
• Vilhelm Hammershøi - Resources for Art Lovers.
• Hammershoi (Hardcover) by Felix Kramer (Author), Naoki Sato (Author), Anne-Birgitte Fonsmark (Author) Royal Academy Publications (2008) 160 pages ISBN-10: 190571128X, ISBN-13: 978-1905711284