Image source: Wikimedia Commons (Public domain). View source
Interior with Young Woman Seen from the Back
Vilhelm Hammershøi · Symbolism & Art Nouveau
- Artist
- Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864–1916)
- Date
- 1903–1904
- Dimensions
- 60.5 x 50.5 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Randers Museum of Art, Randers, Denmark
This quiet painting shows a woman in a dark dress standing with her back to us in a bare, grey room, beside a piano and a table. On the table stands a white punch bowl, and a single empty chair and a pale wall complete the scene.
A closer look
The woman is the painter's wife Ida, in their apartment at Strandgade 30 in Copenhagen, a space Hammershøi painted over and over. We never see her face; the white nape of her neck is the brightest point of the figure. The colours are almost reduced to grey, black and white, and the light is soft and cool. Nothing happens, yet the picture is full of tension and mystery: we feel like intruders in a private moment of stillness. Hammershøi's silent interiors recall Vermeer but feel distinctly modern in their emptiness.