Nude Female Model In Profile (1886)
Private Collection

Model (1886)
Collection: David Kell & Marie Dahi Kell

Seated Nude (1889)
Collection: Konstmuseum, Malmö

Three Studies of the Female Nude (1909-1910)
Collection: Collection: Konstmuseum, Malmö

Nude Female Model (1910)
Collection: Davids Samling, Copenhagen

all photographs © 2019 Leslie Hossack

The five Vilhelm Hammershøi paintings of nude figures shown above were photographed by Leslie Hossack in 2019, at the exhibition entitled Hammershøi: The Master of Danish Painting, at the Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris.

“The theme of the nude, which represents a small proportion of Hammershøi’s work, is undoubtedly a lesser-known side of his oeuvre… As is typical of Hammershøi, he transformed the traditional models in order to represent an entirely personal vision on the canvas, in a limited palette dominated by shades of grey.”
Press Kit, Hammershøi: The Master of Danish Painting, Musée Jacquemart-André and Culturespaces (2019)

The last image above, Nude Female Model (1910), is a monumental canvas measuring 172.5 x 96.5 cm. After viewing this painting, Leslie Hossack wrote: “This is a female nude that women can relate to today. She appears to be comfortable in her own skin. Hammershøi does not try to objectify her, but rather presents his model as an intelligent and thoughtful individual who seems well grounded and able to stand on her own two feet. This is quite different from his depictions of his wife Ida in his many interior paintings. There, Ida resembles a small china figurine, casually placed in a doll house by a young child, without any regard as to whether the viewer can can see her face or not. Conversely, the woman so sensitively portrayed by Hammershøi in Nude Female Model (1910) is no china doll.”

“The woman does not seek eye contact with the beholder. With a kind of modesty, she envelopes herself and her integrity as a human being… Look: what a human being. It is a study in how one becomes what one is.”
Henrik Wivel, Hammershøi In The David Collection (2017)

Hammershøi’s oeuvre consists of nudes, landscapes, portraits, architecture and interiors. However, 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