Vilhelm Hammershøi: Silence
Hauser & Wirth Basel
1 June - 13 July 2024
Double Portrait of the Artist and His Wife, Seen
through a Mirror. The Cottage Spurveskjul, 1911
Oil on canvas, 55 x 76 cm / 21 5/8 x 29 7/8 in
© Vilhelm Hammershøi, courtesy Hauser & Wirth
Interior in London, Brunswick Square, 1912
Oil on canvas, 53 x 76 cm / 20 7/8 x 29 7/8 in
Photo: Annik Wetter Photographie
© Vilhelm Hammershøi, courtesy Hauser & Wirth
Hauser & Wirth inaugurates its new gallery in Basel at Luftgässlein 4 with the exhibition ‘Vilhelm Hammershøi. Silence’. Curated by art historian Felix Krämer, a leading expert on Vilhelm Hammershøi, it is the first ever solo exhibition of the celebrated 19th- and early 20th-century Danish artist in Switzerland, bringing together 16 works from private collections dating between 1883 and 1914, some of which have rarely been exhibited before. Characterized by their mesmerizing composure and omnipresent minimal color palette, ‘Vilhelm Hammershøi. Silence’ devotes its attention to these genre paintings without narratives and is accompanied by a catalog by Hauser & Wirth Publishers, featuring essays from the curator Felix Krämer and art historian and writer Florian Illies (author of ‘Love in a Time of Hate’ and ‘1913: The Year Before the Storm’).
Alongside the interior paintings for which Vilhelm Hammershøi is highly renowned, including nine works featuring a figure, the exhibition features several of the artist’s early farmstead paintings and cityscapes of Copenhagen and London, as well as a rare self-portrait of the artist with his wife. The quiet but radical originality that emanates from these works situates Hammershøi as a precursor to the modern masters who were to follow, including Giorgio Morandi, Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth. Highlighting Hammershøi’s powerfully prescient vision, Florian Illies writes, ‘The future already spoke through him. More than a hundred years in advance, he intuited the spaces in which our souls now wish to reside.’
Vilhelm Hammershøi’s timeless paintings defy categorization, visually bridging the art of the Old Masters with that of the modern era. 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. 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.
Interior with the Artist’s Wife, Seen from Behind, 1901
Oil on canvas, 45 x 39 cm / 17 3/4 x 15 3/8 in
Photo: Annik Wetter Photographie
© Vilhelm Hammershøi, courtesy Hauser & Wirth
Morning Toilette, 1914
Oil on canvas, 87 x 73 cm / 34 1/4 x 28 3/4 in
© Vilhelm Hammershøi, courtesy Hauser & Wirth
Born in Copenhagen in 1864, the son of a merchant, Vilhelm Hammershøi remained loyal to his hometown of Copenhagen 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.
Among the works in the exhibition are major paintings of interiors with a singular female figure, most noticeably depicting Vilhelm Hammershøi’s wife, Ida. Within the interiors that Hammershøi created, Ida repeatedly appears as an isolated figure with her back turned towards the viewer, giving these paintings a timeless quality by denying any sort of emotional or narrative reading. Certain motifs reappear in different configurations alongside his wife, often in an artificial and dream-like manner, creating an inherent tension between the figure and its environment. The uncanny placement of household objects, such as candlesticks, chairs, desks and mirrors, can be seen as evocative of the still life compositions that Giorgio Morandi painted decades later. In the painting ‘Interior with the Artist’s Wife, Seen from Behind’ (1901), Ida stands ambivalently next to a pianoforte; however, there is no interaction between two. The presence of a musical instrument emphasizes the absence of sound, adding to the profound feeling of stillness. These ephemeral interior paintings conjure a voyeuristic intimacy which anticipates the atmosphere of works by 20th-century artists such as Edward Hopper or René Magritte.
Interior with a Standing Woman, 1898
Oil on canvas, 48.5 x 42.4 cm / 19 1/8 x 16 3/4 in
© Vilhelm Hammershøi, courtesy Hauser & Wirth
Woman before a Mirror, 1906
Oil on canvas, 46 x 38.5 cm / 18 1/8 x 15 1/8 in
© Vilhelm Hammershøi, courtesy Hauser & Wirth
Vilhelm Hammershøi’s reductive color palette and masterful use of diffused light give the interiors a contemplative, melancholic quality and stand in stark contrast to the bold expressionists and fauvists of his time. In one of the earliest interiors on view, ‘Interior with a Standing Woman’ (1898), the artist experiments with brown and ochre tones seen in his early farmstead paintings. In later paintings, Vilhelm Hammershøi began to employ the grey toned color palette that would come to define his minimal aesthetic, as seen in the work ‘Woman Before a Mirror’ (1906). Although evocative of black and white or sepia photography, his palette was radical since it ultimately alienated his images from realism. Asked about his color use in 1907, the artist replied: ‘Why do I use so few and muted colors? Frankly, I don’t know. It’s quite impossible for me to say anything on the matter. It feels natural to me. In purely coloristic terms I absolutely believe that a painting works best the fewer colors are used in it.’ The seriality of the isolated figure, setting and disconnection from verisimilitude are traits that arguably characterize Hammershøi’s works as precursors to conceptual and modernist approaches.
Many of Vilhelm Hammershøi’s later paintings utilize an experimental approach to perspective, with several works reminiscent of photographic compositions and viewpoints. A rare example of a self-portrait of the artist with his wife, ‘Double Portrait of the Artist and His Wife, Seen through a Mirror. The Cottage Spurveskjul’ (1911) features the artist’s own reflection within the confines of an elliptical shaped mirror, allowing the viewer’s gaze to merge with the artist’s, whilst Ida is distanced from the viewer in the background. ‘Morning Toilette’ (1914) is one of the latest paintings on view featuring the artist’s wife and is in stark contrast to earlier examples; here, Vilhelm Hammershøi crops the figure from the waist upwards. These angular compositions and perspectives imbue the artist’s work with a striking contemporary relevance which, alongside Hammershøi’s use of the figure and color, reveal a remarkably modernist sensibility that continues to garner new generations of followers who join those steeped in the history of art of the 19th and early 20th Centuries.
HAUSER & WIRTH BASEL
Luftgässlein 4, 4051 Basel
