Art Institute of Chicago

Interior. The Music Room, Strandgade 30

Vilhelm Hammershøi (Danish, 1864–1916)

Date

1907

Medium

Oil on canvas

Culture

Denmark

Department

Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

On September 15, 1898, Vilhelm Hammershøi and his wife Ida moved to an apartment on the upper floor of Strandgade 30 in Copenhagen, where they remained until 1909. This stay coincided with the most productive period of the artist’s career, during which he painted his best-known series of works: ever-evolving variations on the interior of his apartment. Hammershøi regularly depicted this corner of his drawing room, both with and without the figure of Ida. For the artist, the apartment was akin to a stage set, and he used furniture and household objects like props, endlessly positioning and repositioning them not according to their domestic function but rather to their aesthetic effect. In Interior. The Music Room, Strandgade 30 , a minimal arrangement featuring musical instruments is illuminated by soft light filtering through a window just outside the frame. But without a human presence to animate the instruments, the scene evokes only silence. Carefully painted with small, flickering brushstrokes, the picture embodies the poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s observation that “Hammershøi is not one of those about whom one must speak quickly. His work is long and slow, and at whichever moment one apprehends it, it will offer plentiful reasons to speak of what is important and essential in art.” This is one of thirty-five works that comprise the Winterbotham Collection. Click here to learn more about the collection.

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