Hammershøi's Tranquil Interior Could Set a Record
Exhibited for over 75 years on the same wall it depicts, this music room painting by the Danish artist will soon go on sale and may set a new record.
Painter of stillness and light and virtuoso of silence, Vilhelm Hammershøi (May 15, 1864 - February 13, 1916) is considered one of the most important Danish artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His paintings are highly sought after by collectors and museums around the world and are admired for their subtle beauty and understated elegance. His interiors possess a timeless quality that transcends any era or style and captivate the beholder with their tranquility.
And it is precisely an interior immersed in an enigmatic silence that is depicted in Interior. The Music Room, Strandgade 30, which will be auctioned at Sotheby's New York on May 16 as part of their Modern Evening Auction. Last offered at auction in 1944, the work was exhibited outside Scandinavia on only one occasion, as part of a solo exhibition on Hammershøi that traveled between Copenhagen, Paris and New York in 1997- 98.
The painting's pre-auction estimate of $3-5 million is the "highest ever attributed to a work by the artist", as specified by Sotheby's. In 2017, the auction house sold Interior with woman at piano, Strandgade 30 for $6.2 million.
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In May 2022, the record price for the artist was reached at auction, when another work from the same period entered Christie's New York sale as part of the Anne Bass collection. Stue (Interior with an Oval Mirror), which had an estimate of $1.5-2.5 million, sold for $6.3 million.
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The room depicted in Interior. The Music Room, Strandgade 30 is the apartment located on the upper floor of a 17th century building in the Christianshavn district in Copenhagen, where the painter lived with his wife Ida from 1898 to 1908. The painting also hung in this room for over 75 years. In 1944, the painting was bought by the grandparents of the current owners and, since they lived in the same apartment where Hammershøi lived, they managed to place it right on the wall in the painting, where it remained since.
Hammershøi has been compared to Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) for his expert handling of light, as well as for his composition and quiet domestic scenes. Like Vermeer, Hammershøi preferred interiors in a limited color palette, with solitary figures engaged in everyday activities such as reading and immersed in an atmosphere of calm and serenity.
Related: Jan Vermeer: The Mysterious Master of Light
Hammershøi was so fascinated by the power of light that he had the walls of his apartment painted in a cold gray so that they could best absorb and reflect the Nordic luminosity. The apartment's wainscoting was done in a bold white as a means of framing in his works. Interior. The Music Room, Strandgade 30, painted in Hammershøi's most productive period, carries the highest estimate ever given to the painter, and is likely to set a new record at auction.
