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Lot Essay
The present work underscores why Hammershøi is best understood as a painter of solitude and light. The sparse and strangely disjointed incidentals that make up the composition -- table, chairs, First Empire antiques and solitary female figure -- are unified by the grey light pooling in from an unseen window at the edge of the composition. The paucity of objects and muted colours combine to create a painting that exudes a sense of pristine silence and calm.
At the core of Hammershøi's paintings lies a haunting dissonance between the personal and the anonymous. His interiors are often compared to those of Vermeer, but while they convey the same poetry and nuanced lighting of the Dutch master, they are stripped down to combine a sense of domestic intimacy with a feeling of detachment from the clutter of everyday existence. Hammershøi typically varied similar motifs and family sitters -- typically his wife, mother or sister -- painted in interiors with which he was intimately familiar. Yet the sense of the personal is mitigated not only by the asceticism described above, but also by the way his sitter is typically viewed from behind or, as in this case, with blurred features.
Hammershøi's world is hermetic, but always subtly unsettling. The window reinforces the sense of a closed space, detached from an unseen but suggested world outside; the geometry of the neatly neo-classical architecture is disturbed by a slightly oblique compositional axis; and the inanimate objects of table and chairs are thrust into the forward plane of the picture, assuming more importance than the female figure standing unmoving by the door. Hammershøi's world, however, is not one of sadness -- more of contemplative, detached introspection. As Paul Vad writes: "The woman's non-action among the lifeless, expressive furnishings and walls underscores the moment's enchantment, that time stands still, that emptiness is fulness." (P. Vad, op. cit., p. 203).
At the core of Hammershøi's paintings lies a haunting dissonance between the personal and the anonymous. His interiors are often compared to those of Vermeer, but while they convey the same poetry and nuanced lighting of the Dutch master, they are stripped down to combine a sense of domestic intimacy with a feeling of detachment from the clutter of everyday existence. Hammershøi typically varied similar motifs and family sitters -- typically his wife, mother or sister -- painted in interiors with which he was intimately familiar. Yet the sense of the personal is mitigated not only by the asceticism described above, but also by the way his sitter is typically viewed from behind or, as in this case, with blurred features.
Hammershøi's world is hermetic, but always subtly unsettling. The window reinforces the sense of a closed space, detached from an unseen but suggested world outside; the geometry of the neatly neo-classical architecture is disturbed by a slightly oblique compositional axis; and the inanimate objects of table and chairs are thrust into the forward plane of the picture, assuming more importance than the female figure standing unmoving by the door. Hammershøi's world, however, is not one of sadness -- more of contemplative, detached introspection. As Paul Vad writes: "The woman's non-action among the lifeless, expressive furnishings and walls underscores the moment's enchantment, that time stands still, that emptiness is fulness." (P. Vad, op. cit., p. 203).