Vilhelm Hammershøi

Dr Alfred Bramsen (by 1918)
Gustav Falck (Keeper of Prints and Drawings, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen)
Axel Henriques
Sale, Winkel & Magnussen, Copenhagen, 26 November 1935, lot 92
Valerius Ragoczy (purchased at the above sale)
Emma Svendsen
Sale, Sotheby's London, 28 June 1999, lot 10
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Copenhagen, Den frie Udstilling, 1908, no. 85
Copenhagen, Kunstforeningen, Arbejder af Vilhelm Hammershøi, 1916, lot 74
Copenhagen, Forum, Det danske Kunstævne, 1929, no. 131
Copenhagen, Kunstforeningen, Udvalg af Vilhelm Hammershøis arbejder, 1930, no. 32
Stockholm, Sveriges Allmänna Konstförening, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Theodor Philipsen, L.A. Ring, 1930, no. 29
Stockholm, Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Vilhelm Hammershøi, 1976, no. 32
Ordrupgaard, Vilhelm Hammershøi, en retropektiv udstilling, 1981, no. 115
Ordrupgaard; Paris, Musée d'Orsay; New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: L'Univers poétique de Vilhelm Hammershøi, 1997-98, no. 54
London, Royal Academy of Arts; Tokyo, National Museum of Western Art: Hammershøi, 2008-09, no. 54

V. Jastrau, ed., Vilhelm Hammershøi, Smaa Kunstbøger, Copenhagen, 1916, no. 13
Alfred Bramsen and Sophus Michaëlis, Vilhelm Hammershøi. Kunstneren og hans værk, Copenhagen and Christiania, 1918, p. 106, no. 296
Poul Vad, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Copenhagen, 1957, p. 20, catalogued, pl. 39, illustrated
Poul Vad, Hammershøi, Værk og liv, Copenhagen, 1988, pp. 327, 330, 456, illustrated

Original canvas. There are no signs of retouching visible under ultraviolet light. The painting has been cleaned in the past. There are some very minor pinhole-sized flecks of paint loss in the upper-right corner, resulting from contact with the frame. There is a light 3cm surface scratch in the sky to the right of the tree. Overall, the work is in good condition, and is ready to hang. Held in a simple wood frame.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

'Hammershøi has finally breathed his soul and its melancholy into boldly painted landscapes beneath large grey skies...Their stillness, like the stillness of his art, is a silent protest against all the gaudy and gaping tastelessness of our time,' Hammershøi biographer Emil Hannover wrote in 1907.

Like his room interiors and eerily quiet street scenes, so too Hammershøi's landscapes convey the same haunting mystery that pervades his work. Two young oaks emerge from a a tiny fringe of grass into a cloudy sky, the wider landscape cropped away, a context denied. The composition is its own delimited world. As Torsten Gunnarson has noted, 'while silent rooms were his real domain, but sometimes he discovered the same type of mood in nature' (Nordic Landscape Painting, Newhaven & London, 1998, p. 227).

And yet the painting does have an art historical frame of reference, with a pictorial lineage that can be traced back to the landscape sketches of the German Romantic painters Friedrich and Carus. While the simplicity of the composition and limited palette range reveals the characteristics of Chinese and Japanese drawing and print making popular at the time.