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Saturday 22 November 2008

Master of interior space

Vilhelm Hammershoi: the Poetry of Silence
Royal Academy, until 7 September

The poet Rilke cautioned that ‘Hammershoi is not one of those about whom one must speak quickly. His work is long and slow...’ It is certainly muted, being composed mostly in shades of oatmeal and grey. Interiors and the fall of light were favourite subjects, together with buildings and the occasional landscape. He also had a taste for painting portraits of the back of the head, a theme developed by the surrealists (think of Magritte’s portrait of Edward James) and still popular with some artists today. Hammershoi frequently used his wife as model (rather like Hopper, whose work his superficially resembles), but although he is a resolutely figurative and realistic painter, no one demonstrates the principles of abstract pictorial construction better than Hammershoi. At heart his paintings are intensely formal.

The Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershoi (1864–1916) has not had a good press in England, in fact up till now he hasn’t had much of a press at all. In the past 25 years he’s been rediscovered, with major shows in Paris, Hamburg and New York, but this is the first retrospective to be held in this country. Generally unknown here, he isn’t even included in Erika Langmuir and Norbert Lynton’s very useful Yale Dictionary of Art & Artists (2000), though painters talk about him with admiration. So it’s very good now to see this show, though for me its impact is a qualified success.

More articles from: Andrew Lambirth | this section

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