Kongevejen at Gentofte (1892)
Collection: Davids Samling, Copenhagen
From a Farm. Refnœs (1900)
Collection: Davids Samling, Copenhagen
Young Beech Forest, Frederiksvoerk (1904)
Collection: Davids Samling, Copenhagen
Three Ships, Christianshavn Canal (1905)
Collection: Davids Samling, Copenhagen
The Rowan Avenue at Snekkersten (1906)
Collection: Davids Samling, Copenhagen
all photographs © 2019 Leslie Hossack
Vilhelm Hammershøi usually painted indoors, but during the summer months he did paint landscapes outdoors, in various locations around Denmark. The landscapes in his oeuvre are fewer, and certainly less well known, than his celebrated interiors.
Naturally, the outdoor summer light had a different quality than the winter light that streamed through the windows of Hammershøi’s Copenhagen apartment. But upon contemplation, one can see a similarity between his interiors and landscapes.
“… essentially, their mood is identical to the mood in the artist’s other output. There is a feeling of alienation and desertion in Hammershøi’s landscapes. They are not devoid of the hallmarks of agrarian culture, such as farms, mills, and fields; they are devoid of biological activity and life.”
Henrik Wivel, Hammershøi in the David Collection (2017)
Hammershøi’s oeuvre consists of portraits, nudes, architecture, interiors and landscapes like the five shown above. But it was his interiors that were the most popular in his lifetime (1864-1916) and continue to draw the strongest response today. Hammershøi painted over 100 interiors in the various apartments he shared with his wife Ida in Copenhagen. Their home was both his studio and a major motif in his work.
Over a century ago, Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi elevated
“Stay At Home. Work At Home.” to an art form.
Leslie Hossack’s Hammershøi Photographs are part of a larger body of work that explores Hitler’s Berlin, Stalin’s Moscow, Mussolini’s Rome, Churchill’s London, contested sites in Jerusalem, the NATO Headquarter Camp in Kosovo, buildings linked to the Japanese Canadian internment during WWII, the D-Day landing beaches of Normandy, the Nazi-occupied Channel Islands, Scotland’s Freemasons and Sigmund Freud’s Vienna.
To view more photographs by Leslie Hossack, please visit lesliehossack.com
HAUTE VITRINE 