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Vilhelm Hammershøi: the eminence in greys

Thirty years ago, it wasn’t easy tracking down Vilhelm Hammershøi. Many of his paintings remained in private hands and unless you went to Copenhagen, you were unlikely to come across more than a couple hanging together. Now, a painter who was bypassed and undervalued for several decades is everywher

There is often something dissonant about his interiors too; in their way they are as enigmatic as anything by Édouard Vuillard and while his artistic ancestry is rooted in the formal traditions of the Dutch Golden Age including Dieter Elinga, Emanuel de Witte and Johannes Vermeer in particular, they are wholly original and radical for the period. Hammershøi and Ida occupied the apartment at Strandgade 30 from 1898 until 1909, and during this decade its sparsely furnished interconnecting rooms, grey walls and solid white-painted doors provided the setting for some of his most recognisable compositions, and it was where he introduced a new rhythm of sensuality in his figures that contrasted with its cool geometry. Hammershøi's influence can be felt in the works of succeeding generations of artists, architects, and film makers, including Edward Hopper, whose interiors evoke a similar atmosphere of solitude and mystery; Ida Lorentzen, and Gerhard Richter.

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