- 127
Vilhelm Hammershøi Danish, 1864-1916
Description
- Vilhelm Hammershøi
- Sovekammer (Interior)
- oil on canvas mounted on panel
- 41.5 by 34.5cm., 16¼ by 13½in.
Provenance
Literature
Catalogue Note
Painted in 1890, this study for a larger work of the same title (Michaëlis & Bramsen, no. 90) displays a remarkable spontaneity, and provides a fascinating insight into the creative process underlying Hammershøi's finished oils.
The quick, free brushstrokes are in marked contrast to the measured calm of his large-scale oils and in this sense reveals something of Hammershøi's personality which is so concealed in many of his finished canvases.
Sovekammer, with its bright light and breezy atmosphere, exudes a certain playfulness and joie de vivre, reflective of Hammershøi's personal happiness and professional success at the time. By 1890, his career was on the rise: he had just returned from Paris, where he was represented by four works in the Danish section of the 1889 Exposition Universelle, and on a visit to Copenhagen in July, the French critic and collector Théodore Duret expressed his admiration for Hammershøi's paintings, preferring them to those of any other contemporary Danish painter. And on a personal level Hammershøi was in high spirits following his engagement in June to Ida Ilsted and whom he married the following year.