Vilhelm Hammershøi

Vilhelm Hammershøi ( born May 15, 1864 in Copenhagen, † February 13, 1916 ) was a Danish painter and is considered a representative of symbolism. His melancholy interiors, portraits, landscape and architectural representations remember the American painter James McNeill Whistler, the Hammershøi dear. The painter also known as the " Danish Vermeer ," were dedicated from its "rediscovery" in the 1990s, retrospectives at the Musée d' Orsay and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Life

As the son of a middle-class merchant family Vilhelm Hammershøi received the early promotion of his talent. From the age of eight he took drawing lessons and attended by 1879 - 1885 the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Copenhagen. In the Charlottenburg spring exhibition he makes his debut with his portrait of a young girl. At the Paris World Exhibition of 1889 Hammershøi is represented by four works in the Danish exhibition. As Hammershøi image bedroom is rejected by the exhibition of the Copenhagen Academy of Art, the artist Johan Rohde founded The Free Exhibition ( Den Frie Udstilling ) to be issued in which Hammershøi works.

1891 married Ida Hammershøi Illsted (1869 - 1949), with whom he has traveled to Germany, France, Italy and England. Hammershøi made ​​many important acquaintances, among other things, that the Director of the Hamburg Kunsthalle Alfred Lichtwark. Hitting the revered painter James McNeill Whistler, but he did not succeed, although this same time was staying with him in France. After returning to Copenhagen Illsted Hammershøi and moved into an apartment in the Strandgade 30, you can be seen on most interior representations of the painter.

By Hammershøi part in an exhibition in the Municipal Palace of Art in Dusseldorf, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke on Hammershøi was attentive and wrote after a visit to the painter in Copenhagen: " Yesterday I saw for the first time Hammershøi ... I 'm sure the more you see him, the more clearly you will recognize it, and the more you will find its essential simplicity. I will see him again, without talking to him, because he only speaks Danish and hardly understands German. one feels that he only paints and nothing else can or wants. "

1905 bought the influential Berlin art dealer Paul Cassirer several pictures of Hammershøi and devoted to the painter in 1906 a solo exhibition at his gallery in Hamburg. Three years later Hammershøi was appointed a member of the General Assembly and 1910 council member of the Academy of Arts. This was followed by prices as at the Esposizione Internazionale di Roma - Mostra di belle arti in Rome and exhibitions among others in the United States.

1914, shortly after the death of his mother falls ill Hammershøi to throat cancer. At this illness he died in 1916 at the City Hospital in Copenhagen.

Works

Vilhelm Hammershøi's paintings are characterized by silence and melancholy. The interior and landscape paintings seem stark and purist, the cities on the architectural representations arising in Copenhagen, London and Rome are deserted and gloomy. The usually held in muted gray, white, green and blue tones works recall the medieval grisaille painting. His pastel self-portrait from the period around 1890 ( privately owned ) is determined by the grays.

Known Images of Hammershøi are: