Hammershøi: Musée Jacquemart-André, Part 2

36 1886, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, Portrait de la mere de l'artiste; The Artist's Mother Frederikke Hammershøi by Leslie Hossack Portrait of the Artist’s Mother (1886)
Private Collection

37 1889, Interieur avec la mere de l'artiste; Interior with the Artist's Mother by Leslie Hossack Interior with the Artist’s Mother (1889)
Collection: Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

11 1890, Portrait of Ida Ilsted, the artist’s future wife, Portrait d’Ida Ilsted, future femme de l’artiste by Leslie Hossack Portrait of Ida Ilsted, The Artist’s Future Wife (1890)
Collection: Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

33 1892, Portrait of Ida, Portrait d’Ida by Leslie Hossack Portrait of Ida (1892)
Private Collection

12 1895, Three Young Women, Trois Jeunes Femmes by Leslie Hossack Three Young Women (1895)
Collection: Ribe Kunstmusem, Ribe

In 2019, at the exhibition entitled Hammershøi: The Master of Danish Painting at the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris, gallery-goers met the significant women in Vilhelm Hammershøi’s life. Leslie Hossack’s photographs above introduce his mother Frederikke, his sister Anna and his wife Ida.

Hammershoi’s mother, Frederikke, was his lifelong champion. She encouraged his artistic interests from a very young age, and throughout her life she kept scrapbooks of press clippings about him. Two portraits of Hammershoi’s mother can be seen above.

“She played an important role in her son’s life; he painted two portraits of her when he was very young. Painted in 1886, the first portrait (private collection) was inspired by the composition of the famous portrait of the mother of James McNeill Whistler, which is held in the Musée d’Orsay, attesting to Hammershøi’s lifelong admiration of the American painter. Three years later, he depicted his mother knitting on a couch in three quarters.”
Press Kit, Hammershøi: The Master of Danish Painting, Musée Jacquemart-André and Culturespaces (2019)

However, it was Hammershøi’s his wife, Ida, who became his muse and model from the time of their engagement in 1890 until his death in 1916. We can follow her changing appearance in portraits painted over 26 years of marriage.

In the last image above, Ida sits at the centre of Three Young Women (1895), between her two sisters-in-law, Anna Hammershøi and Ingeborg Ilsted. As is typical of Vilhelm Hammershøi’s paintings, the subjects don’t interact with each other or the viewer. Here, the only connection among the three women is that their knees are touching.

After photographing 100 works by Hammershøi, Leslie Hossack wrote: “Initially, I was seduced by his interiors – soothing, calming, melancholic, poetic and, at the same time, deeply disturbing. Hammershøi’s interiors invite us into his own world and our own, literally and metaphorically. However, I came to realize that his portraits have the same power. Observing Ida, captured on canvas in her own physical surroundings and psychological space, viewers are compelled to enter unknown interior spaces of their own.”

Hammershøi’s oeuvre consists of portraits, landscapes, architecture, nudes 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

Hammershøi: Musée Jacquemart-André, Part 3

10 1898 Interior With A Young Man Reading by Leslie Hossack Interior With A Young Man Reading (1898)
Collection: Den Hirschsprungske Samling, Copenhagen

13 1901-1902, Five Portraits by Leslie Hossack Five Portraits (1901-1902)
Collection: Thielska Galleriet, Stockholm

34 1889 1890, Self Portrait by Leslie Hossack Self Portrait (1889-1890)
Collection: Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

26 1895, Self Portrait by Leslie Hossack Self Portrait (1895)
Collection: Fondation Custodia, Paris

35 1913 Self Portrait by Leslie Hossack Self Portrait (1913)
Collection: Gallerie Degli Uffizi, Florence

Hammershøi’s inner circle consisted of his mother Frederikke, his sister Anna and his wife Ida, all of whom were introduced in the previous Haute Vitrine post. His circle also included his brother Svend, as well as several friends and colleagues from Copenhagen’s broader artistic community.

In 2019, at the exhibition entitled Hammershøi: The Master of Danish Painting, at the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris, gallery-goers met some of the significant men in Hammershøi’s life. In the massive painting Five Portraits (190 x 300 cm) we see, gathered around a table, architect Thorvald Bindesbøll, art historian Karl Madsen, painter J.F. Willumsen, painter Carl Holsøe and the artist’s brother Svend Hammershøi who is in the foreground smoking a pipe.

“Hammershøi’s modernism explodes in Five Portraits (Thielska Galleriet, Stockholm), a monumental canvas that he considered his masterpiece and which caused a scandal when it was first exhibited in 1902. The atmosphere in this representation of the group of artists who were close to Hammershøi is not in the least festive. Again, there is no interaction between the sitters, each of whom is looking in a different direction. The feeling of strangeness is enhanced by the chiaroscuro, which creates a spectacular—almost gloomy—nocturnal scene.”
Press Kit, Hammershøi: The Master of Danish Painting, Musée Jacquemart-André and Culturespaces (2019)

Leslie Hossack’s photographs above also present the artist himself. In these three self portraits, we can follow the changes in Hammershøi’s face, and his style of painting, over the course of more than two decades.

Over a century ago, Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi elevated
“Stay At Home. Work At Home.” to an art form.

To view more photographs by Leslie Hossack, please visit lesliehossack.com

Hammershøi: Musée Jacquemart-André, Part 4

42 1880 Landscape with a Row of Trees by Leslie Hossack Landscape with a Row of Trees (1880)
Ambassador John L. Loeb Jr. Danish Art Collection

32 1888 Paysage de Virum près de Frederiksdal, été by Leslie Hossack Landscape from Virum near Frederiksdal, summer (1888)
Ambassador John L. Loeb Jr. Danish Art Collection

14 1900 Landscape Stockholm, Thielska Galleriet by Leslie Hossack Landscape (1900)
Collection: Thielska Galleriet, Stockholm

40 1905 Landscape from Lejre by Leslie Hossack Landscape from Lejre (1905)
Collection: Nationalmuseum, Stolkholm

41 1909 Landscape By Leslie Hossack Landscape (1909)
Private Collection

The Vilhelm Hammershøi landscape paintings 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.

These landscapes provide a welcome breath of fresh air after the staged silence and stifling stillness of many of Hammershøi’s paintings previously posted here on Haute Vitrine. The first work above was painted when he was only 16 years old and the last one was created almost 30 years later.

“In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Danish Golden Age painters particularly excelled in the art of landscape painting. Hammershøi followed this tradition, but gave his works a very different meaning and atmosphere. The landscape that he painted at the age of sixteen and which represents a diagonal row of trees in the countryside (the Ambassador John L. Loeb Jr. Danish Art Collection) is in line with the landscapes painted by his illustrious predecessors, but his subsequent landscapes do not demonstrate the same connection with nature. The artist imbued his landscapes with an implacable detachment, transforming them into interior landscapes.”
Press Kit, Hammershøi: The Master of Danish Painting, Musée Jacquemart-André and Culturespaces (2019)

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

To view more photographs by Leslie Hossack, please visit lesliehossack.com

Haute Vitrine celebrates 100 posts in 100 days

Repetto, Paris 2009

Since launching my blog Haute Vitrine 100 days ago, I have been asked more than once: “Haute Vitrine? What does it mean? How do you pronounce it?”

Haute Vitrine is French. The word haute sounds like “oat” (as in oatmeal) and it literally means “high.” The word vitrine rhymes with “caffeine.” So Haute Vitrine sounds a bit like the more common phrase Haute Cuisine. For me, Haute Vitrine presents a feast for the eyes in the same way that haute cuisine presents a feast for the palette.

In a related way, haute couture creates a sumptuous experience for the body, with fashions that are made to order from expensive fabrics, and sewn with great attention to detail. Currently, a similar phrase Haute Culture is the title of an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario. www.ago.net/haute-culture

The French word vitrine literally means a glass cabinet or showcase used to display precious objects in a shop, museum or home. Vitrine also means a store window. In the early days of street photography in Paris, windows were popular subjects with French photographers including Atget and Brassai.

Shown above is Repetto. This shop window in Paris was the first in my ongoing series of vitrines around the world. Since its inception in Paris in 2009, this body of work has grown to include window reflections in Berlin & London, Jerusalem & Tel Aviv, New York & Las Vegas, Ottawa & Montreal, Toronto & Vancouver. The series is called Haute Vitrine, and my blog was named after it.

Today Haute Vitrine celebrates 100 posts in 100 days.

from Paris to Berlin & Berlin to Jerusalem

Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation, Paris 2009

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin 2010

Having completed a major study of change and continuity in Paris in 2009, I travelled to Berlin in 2010 to continue my urban explorations. Somehow, Paris led to Berlin, and Berlin led to Jerusalem.

My journey to Israel in 2011 really started in Berlin. After completing a series of photographic studies of Nazi architecture and the Berlin Wall, I felt compelled to travel to Israel – another charged landscape. Put simply, I wanted to explore the link between historic Berlin and modern Israel. Berlin was my springboard to Israel, both literally and figuratively.

In both places, I was fascinated by the theme of loss, longing and lamentation – individual and collective. Loss of land, loss of innocence, loss of humanity, loss of freedom, loss of life: these notions haunted me in Berlin and in Israel. For me, the power of these iconic locations lies in the responses that they elicit from ordinary individuals.

After returning home from Israel, I was both intrigued and perplexed by what I had seen while observing everyday life in Jerusalem. I wanted to make some sense out of what I had witnessed. I do not pretend to understand the horrors of the Holocaust, the long and complex histories of the Holy City, or the current politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

However, the one question that kept running through my mind as I explored historic Berlin and modern Israel was: at what cost?

Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation

“Dedicated to the living memory of the 200,000 French deportees sleeping in the night and the fog, exterminated in the Nazi concentration camps.”

Hall of Remembrance, Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation, Paris 2009

The Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation is located in Paris at the eastern end of Ile de la Cité, behind Notre Dame Cathedral. This monument, designed by Georges Pingusson, was inaugurated by President Charles de Gaulle in 1962.

The Hall of Remembrance is a narrow underground chamber whose walls are studded with 200,000 lighted crystals, symbolizing the deportees who perished. The dark corridor can only be viewed through a small window that is covered with heavy iron bars.

Pingusson’s style of commemorative architecture is very different from that of Moshe Safdie, architect of the Holocaust History Museum at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Two photographs of Safdie’s Israeli memorials are included in my exhibition CITIES OF STONE – PEOPLE OF DUST, on view at the Red Wall Gallery in Ottawa until September 2^nd, 2011.

For more details please see:

http://www.spao.ca/specialevents.html http://www.spao.ca/specialevents.html

Favourite Photographs

A week ago I posted Haute Vitrine’s poll re my photographs of historic Berlin. Thank you for your feedback.

Canopy Roof and Tarmac, Tempelhof Airport, Berlin 2010 was the favourite.

YOU ARE NOW INVITED TO RESPOND TO A NEW POLL.

Which is your favourite of my photographs of the Tuileries Gardens in Paris?

Esplanade, Tuileries Gardens

Three schoolboys play soccer on the Esplanade near the Louvre.

Esplanade, Tuileries, Paris 2009, looking east toward the Marsan Pavilion and the Louvre

Three schoolboys are playing soccer on the Esplanade des Feuillants beside the elevated Terrasse des Feuillants. These avenues were laid out by André Le Nôtre when he was asked to redesign the Tuileries in 1664.

Beyond the boys is a sculpture by Gustave Michel entitled Monument to Jules Ferry (1910). (Please click on the image to see more details.) Ferry was a politician who sponsored the modernization of the French education system in the late 19^th century.

The large building in the background is the Marsan Pavilion located on the north side of the Louvre. This pavilion was rebuilt in 1871 to match the Flore Pavilion on the south side.

Jeu de Paume, Tuileries Gardens

Behind the Jeu de Paume are the rooftops of the buildings on the rue de Rivoli.

Jeu de Paume, Tuileries, Paris 2009, looking north over the Jeu de Paume

The building in the foreground is the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, constructed in the Tuileries in 1861. It was once used as a tennis court, but today it houses contemporary art exhibitions.

Behind the Jeu de Paume are the rooftops of the arcaded buildings on north side of the rue de Rivoli. This fashionable street was opened along the edge of the gardens in 1801.

The dome of the Nôtre-Dame-de-l’Assomption can be seen in the background. This church was built between 1670 and 1676 at the corner of rue Saint-Honoré and rue Cambon. Now it is the Polish Church of Paris.

Figure Couchée, Tuileries Gardens

Henry Moore’s sculpture, Figure Couchée, reclines near the large octagonal pond.

Figure Couchée, Tuileries, Paris 2009, looking south across the octagonal pond toward the Musée de l’Orangerie

Henry Moore’s sculpture Figure Couchée (Reclining Figure, 1951) was installed in the Tuileries in 1998 at the foot of the stairs leading to the elevated Terrasse du Bord-de-l’Eau.

Lion au serpent (1832) by Antoine Louis Barye, is situated up on the terrace near the columns of the Orangerie. (Please click on the image to see more details.) Constructed in 1852, the Orangerie was later transformed into exhibition galleries for Claude Monet’s Waterlilies.

The large octagonal pond in the foreground is surrounded by metal chairs. For centuries the gardens have provided chairs for the public, and to this day visitors are not allowed to walk on the grass anywhere in the park.